


Class 7 

Book -'W lC»*^t)~ T~0 
CoipghtN“_ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 












TOORALLADDY 




\ 


« • 



t 


I 


( 




% 


\ 


% 










4 


1 






» 





4 




f 


4 




« 


I 


V 



“By the u'ay, my boy,” said the senator, “ivhere did you get 
that ridieiilous name, Tooralladdy?” Page 33. 


TOORALLADDY 


BY 

JULIA C. WALSH 

n 


New York, Cincinnati, Chicago 

BENZIGER BROTHERS 


PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE 
1907 


LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

DEC 15 1906 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS y? XXc., No. 

^7 f 

COPY B. 


(SOPYRIGHT, 1907, BY BeNZIGER BROTHERS 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I Page 

“On’y fer Tooralladdy I wudn’t be kotcbed’* . 9 

CHAPTER II 

Tooralladdy meets Senator Darbison ^3 

CHAPTER III 

The Swimming Signal 35 

CHAPTER IV 

The Drowning 47 

CHAPTER V 

Cillie’s Curiosity 63 

CHAPTER VI 

Cesare Shows his Teeth 69 

CHAPTER VII 

Murder! ... 79 

CHAPTER VIII 

Tooralladdy ’s Detective Work 91 

CHAPTER IX 

The “Mother School’s” New Pupil 101 

7 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER X 

Tooralladdy’s Education Ill 

CHAPTER XI 

A Subpoena . 125 

CHAPTER XH 

The Trial 133 

CHAPTER Xin 

Tooralladdy’s Reward 147 


TOORALLADDY 


CHAPTER I 

“on’y FER TOORALLADDY I WUDN’t BE 
kotched” 

D usk of the evening and the voices of 
children at play. 

Their cheerful and happy laughter sounds 
through the quiet of the secluded neighborhood 
wliile the yellow flash of the gas-lamps pierces 
the twilight. Old Thaddy Flynn, the crook- 
backed lamplighter, with his ladder and torch, 
jogs from pave to pave kindling a trail of lights, 
one on the north side of the street, now one on 
the south, until he finishes his zigzag course and 
disappears. As he leans his ladder against each 
succeeding lamp-post, the children nearby run 
and put their ears to the hollow iron shaft to 
hear the gas rush up; and as Thaddy descends 
and continues on his march they salute him 
with cries of 

“ Thaddy Flynn, Daddy Flynn, 

The light is lit, the gas is in!” 

But Thaddy does not mind them in the 
9 


10 


“on’y fer tooralladdy 


least: he has heard that song for these many 
years, from their elder sisters and brothers and 
from the parents of some of them, who once 
were the children of this street. So he goes his 
gruff way with his twisting, hmping gait, and 
the children return to their play. 

Sometime during the century just past — and 
that may mean five, or thirty-five, or even 
ninety-five years ago; I will not commit myself 
to any period more definite — there existed a 
small and extremely democratic community in 
a street not a quarter of a mile, as the crow 
flies, from what is now the commercial center of 
a large western city; and when I call it a dem- 
ocratic community, I do not mean anything 
relating to political parties, as I shall presently 
explain. 

This community was small in more senses 
than one. Small in numbers, its membership 
varying from twenty to thirty, perhaps; and 
small in stature, for those who belonged to it 
were all children; and though some of them 
lived in handsome homes, and a few in hovels, 
and the majority belonged to families that were 
comfortably well-off, yet there were no dis- 
tinctions between them that related in any way 
to wealth or poverty, or, for the matter of 
that, to difference of complexion. 


I wudn’t be kotched” 11 

Poverty was represented by the Gifts, a 
family of very decent colored people; the 
children were the first generation out of slavery, 
and the mother, once a slave, was now janitress 
of Zion Colored Baptist Church, in the base- 
ment of which they lived. Then there were the 
Doolans, who lived in two rooms in a tenement 
house; and the Jenkinses, whose crippled 
father did chores for everybody in the neighbor- 
hood; and the Ginns, children of a semi- 
fashionable dressmaker; and so on, up the 
scale, to Dillie and Cillie Darbison, whose 
father was an ex-senator, a man who owned 
his ward and was a power in politics by reason 
of his well-known honesty and probity. Be- 
tween Jane Gift, ex-slave, and John Darbison, 
ex-senator, there were people on that street of 
every grade of society and of many nationalities, 
including a few Italians, some recent German 
immigrants, several Jews, and a family of 
mixed Indian and negro blood. They were 
all decent, respectable people, and their chil- 
dren played, quarreled, and made up among 
themselves as it is only possible for children 
to do in small communities where everybody 
knows everybody else, and all may rest as- 
sured that there is no black sheep in the little 
fold. 


12 ‘‘on’y fer tooralladdy 

This street was shut in by its location in such 
a way as to be very retired and almost subur- 
ban. It was only one block in length, but that 
a long one, equal to two streets that ran parallel 
to it; and whereas you could enter it from its 
western end — and when you did you were 
always surprised and delighted at its width, its 
fine old houses, its pretty front and side yards 
and its old forest trees — when you reached the 
farther extremity on the south pavement you 
found yourself brought up short by the blank 
side wall of a three-story brick house that 
jutted out where the pavement should have 
continued; and beyond that house a high board 
fence stretched across to the north side of the 
street to the corner of a great square frame 
structure that was a meeting-house for a Welsh 
congregation. 

If you were riding or driving, the only thing 
to do was to turn about and go out as you had 
come in; but if you were on foot, you might 
penetrate beyond the fence through a small 
gate that opened just where the middle of the 
street would properly be; and then you would 
see, to the left, the Welsh Yard, and to the 
right, the Dutch Yard, and straight ahead of 
you, a narrow, crooked path that led down a 
gentle slope and seemed to wander into no- 


I wudn’t be kotched” 


13 


where, but which really conducted one, through 
considerable muck and mire, to the next cross- 
street, a good long block away. 

The street should have had, at its open end, 
a “No Thoroughfare” sign, for it had never 
been carried out to its full length as planned. 
But that was not set down to its discredit by 
the people who lived there; in fact, many of 
them lived there for that very reason, for that 
was what made it particularly attractive to 
people with large famiUes of small children; 
the children could be turned loose to play at 
any and all hours of the day, and there were no 
qualms in their mothers’ hearts lest Tom, Dick, 
or Harry, Nan, Katie, or Sue might be run 
over or knocked down by a passing team. 
Only milk wagons, vegetable pedlers and 
coal carts came that way, and they did their 
errands slowly and then speedily departed. 

Most of the houses were large and of sub- 
stantial build; indeed, there were only seven 
small frame cottages on the whole long block. 
Most of them, too, were occupied by their 
owners, who took pride in keeping them very 
spick and span; and those which were rented 
commanded a good class of tenants, thus keep- 
ing the neighborhood one of undoubted re- 
spectability. 


14 “on'y fer tooralladdy 

Senator Darbison lived in a large, double 
house on the south side of the street. It had 
a wide flight of white marble steps leading up 
to the double-leaved door, which opened into 
a long and wide hall running quite through the 
house; and on either side of the steps, about 
four feet above the pavement, were stone bal- 
conies guarded by iron balustrades, on which 
opened the long windows that belonged to 
the parlor on the one side, and the library on 
the other side of the house. In front there 
was no garden nor grass plot, for the house stood 
flush with the street ; but at the side and back 
there were lawns and flower-beds and a few 
unprofitable fruit trees, with here and there 
an immense sycamore for shade, and away in 
the rear the stable. The side lawn was sepa- 
rated from the street by an iron fence which 
insured privacy but did not cut off a view of 
the pretty garden that was a source of enjoy- 
ment to the neighborhood. Senator Darbison’s 
was by far the most pretentious house in the 
block, and the most hospitable, as accorded 
well with its owner’s generous disposition and 
his family traditions. 

Almost opposite, but a little further down the 
street, was Zion Baptist Church, where well-to- 
do colored folk came every Sunday to worship 


I wudn’t be kotched” 15 

according to their tuneful and somewhat ex- 
citable wont; and in the basement rooms, a 
trifle below the level of the street, lived Jane 
Gift and her children, she the janitress of the 
church and general charwoman for the house- 
keepers of that locality. 

Further down on the same side of the street 
was another chapel, the one mentioned before 
as that of a Welsh congregation. During the 
week it looked like nothing in the world but 
a big square box, for when its door and shut- 
ters were closed the surface was perfectly flat; 
but on Wednesday nights, when there was 
always prayer-meeting, and all day Sunday 
it was wide awake, with shining glass windows, 
and from within came the echoes of a queer 
language that amused the outsiders not less 
than did the songs of the worshippers at Zion 
Baptist Church further up the street. 

Then came that fence that I told you of, run- 
ning from the Welsh chapel to the brick house 
opposite; and if you opened the gate and went 
through, you found back of the Welsh chapel 
a large frame tenement house occupied by a 
few Irish families and a great many , Welsh; 
hence the name, the Welsh Yard; and back 
of the brick house another big brick tenement 
occupied by Germans, with the vacant lot near 


16 “on’y fer tooralladdy 

it called the Dutch Yard. Between the two, 
Welsh Yard and Dutch Yard, there was no visi- 
ble separation ; but the crooked path that ran 
down to Drain street from the gate in the fence 
was the well-known dividing line. 

And now that I have given you some idea of 
the neighborhood, we may return to the children 
whom we left at play. 

It was a fine May evening, balmy and warm ; 
not quite dark, but dusky; and there was a great 
game of “I Spy” in progress. Boys and girls 
of every degree were in it, from little tots of 
six up to big ones of fifteen or sixteen; black, 
white, and brown; barefoot and shod; rich 
and poor; clean and — well, not dirty, but just 
as clean as children can be who have played 
hard since they were washed and dressed be- 
fore supper. They were heart and soul in 
the game and everybody was playing fair, for 
they had crossed their hearts, before they began, 
not to cheat. 

Wolfe’s lamp-post, about midway of the 
block, was “Home,” and Heavenly Gift, Jane 
Gift’s young son, was “It.” When he went 
prowling up the street, out of the side entrances 
and alleyways of the houses behind him came 
many a cautious head, watching for a chance 
to get Home free; and when he sneaked down 


I wudn’t be kotched” 


17 


the street, up from basement areas and down 
from big trees and over low fences and from 
under slant cellar doors came others, racing 
for the goal; so that poor Hev — so his name 
was usually shortened by everyone except his 
doting mammy — was in danger of being It 
again, although Miss Marget Ann and Lucindy 
Elviry Jane, his sisters, were trying their best 
to save him from that fate by squealing fran- 
tically whenever any one appeared; at which, 
of course, he instantly ran for Home, but always 
arrived too late. 

“Looks like you’re It again, Hev,” said a 
nice little girl who was sitting on the nearest 
doorstep. “Might as well hide your eyes.” 

“Ev’ body in ?” asked Hev, with a grin that 
showed all his white teeth and his shining eyes. 

“Naw, th’ ain’t,” protested Miss Marget Ann. 
“Dillie’s out yet an’ so’s Tim an’ Bert an’ that 
other feller. E-e-e-e-e,” she finished with a 
shrill squeal, and jumped up and down in her 
excitement, so that Heavenly turned just in 
time to touch the lamp-post as Tim Doolan 
and a lanky, red-haired, freckle-faced boy 
darted up out of somewhere, panting from 
their run. 

“Who’s that boy.^” asked the little girl who 
had first spoken, turning to Miss Marget Ann 


18 


“on’y fer tooralladdy 


after surveying the lad with interest; but be- 
fore the latter could reply Tim gasped out in 
a rich brogue : — 

“ On’y fer Tooralladdy, I’d never be kotched !” 

The nice little girl laughed long and merrily 
at Tim’s queer English; but Tim did not mind: 
he knew she was not making fun of him; and 
he and the new boy dropped down on the curb- 
stone near her to rest. 

“What a funny name!” she exclaimed at last, 
looking at the new boy, who was looking at her. 

“Whose ?” he questioned. 

“Yours.” 

“No funnier’n yourn,” he said pleasantly, 
“or his’n,” he added, pointing to the girl’s twin 
brother, who had just popped across the street 
in response to a sing-song cry of : 

“Come in, come in, wherever you are!” 

“No funnier’n Hev’s or his sisters’ or lots 
of others around here,” the new boy continued. 

“Oh, well, theirs are funny. Heavenly Gift 
— don’t you see ? His mother says that’s what 
he is, a heavenly gift to her. And Miss Marget 
Ann was named for Jane’s old mistress in the 
South, and that’s what Jane always calls her. 
And Lucindy Elviry Jane is Jane’s own name, 
but she says no one e'^er had time to call her 
by it, so she’s bound somebody’ll get it. But 


I wudn’t be kotched” 


19 


yours is kind of — kind of foolish, isn’t it ?” 
said the little girl, trying to express herself 
without hurting the boy’s feelings. 

“Tillie an’ Silly’s foolish, too,” he answered 
cheerfully. 

“Oh, but those aren’t our right names. His 
is Dillie, not Tillie; and mine’s C-I-L-L-I-E, 
not S-I-L-L-Y; and our long names are Dil- 
lingham and Cecilia, only nobody ever calls 
us that. But I never heard of anything like 
Tool — looral — what is it, anyway.^” 

“Well, just because folks calls me Tooralladdy 
ain’t no sign that’s my right name, either.” 

“What is your right name, then, and where 
do you live 

“My name’s Edward Tracy an’ I live with 
the Doolans now. I’m goin’ to take care of 
the pigs, so’s Tim can go to school reg’lar. He 
don’t know his joggerfy an’ Father Bacon says 
it’s a shame; an’ I know mine, so I can spare 
the time; an’ besides, I need the job, ’cause I 
ain’t got no home nor nobody.” 

“And are you coming around for the slops 
instead of Timmie ?” 

“Urn— hm.” 

“And if I go down in the Welsh Yard will 
you take me to see the little piggies and hear 
’em squeal 


20 


“on’y fer tooralladdy 


“You bet!” ejaculated the lanky boy; and 
thereby made himself, a very staunch little 
friend. 

“Ef it wasn’t for Tooralladdy I wudn’t never 
be kotched,” again said Tim; and Cillie 
laughed again. 

“Well, dat’s so!” he insisted. “Me an’ him 
was back o’ your stable an’ I sez ‘Let’s shin 
over Wolfe’s fence an’ sneak out deir alley- 
way,’ an’ he sez ‘All right’; but it was so dark 
in deir shed dat he got losted in de ash barrels, 
an’ time we got to de front gate, Hev was 
cornin’ back.” 

“Um — ^hm,” assented Tooralladdy, “we’d 
’a’ been in long ago if ’t hadn’t been fer me. ” 

“Wal, ah seen Tim an’ ah t3ched fer ’im,” 
protested Heavenly. 

“Oh, ahl roight, Hev, I’m It,” said Tim; 
and he hid his eyes on his bended arm against 
the lamp-post and began to count one hundred 
by fives while the children scattered in every 
direction to hide again. When he had said 
five, ten, fifteen, and so on up to ‘ ‘wan hunderd,” 
which he proclaimed in a loud voice, Tim 
cried : 

“Ready or not, you must be cot!” 

Which meant caught; and then he went in 
search of the others. 


I wudn’t be kotched” 21 

So the game went on while the dusk grew 
deeper; and when it was too dark for “I Spy,” 
they played “Drop the Handkerchief” in a big 
ring that was stretched in the middle of the 
street almost from curb to curb; and, after 
that, “Here Goes a Blackbird Through the 
AAdndow,” and “Marching along to Old 
Quebec,” and half a dozen others. 

After some time a bell rang, and Dillie and 
Gillie, calling “good-night” to the rest of the 
children, ran home to the big house — for their 
father was Senator Darbison — as that was a 
summons they could hear, no matter where in 
the neighborhood they might be at play, and 
they always obeyed it. And gradually the 
group of children grew smaller and smaller, 
as one after another was called by father or 
mother, until at last there were left but a few of 
the bigger boys, who sat on a cellar door and 
talked about Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss 
Family Robinson and Tattered Tom and 
Ragged Dick and other book heroes who were 
then the fashion among boys. 

Tim Doolan and Tooralladdy returned to 
the Welsh Yard, where Tim soon crawled into 
a trundle-bed with his two little brothers; and 
Tooralladdy, after washing his bare feet in the 
trough at the pump, sought the basement, and 


“on’y fer tooralladdy’’ 


thought himself very well off in the bunk that 
Mrs. Doolan had made up for him in a sort of 
closet boarded off from the cellar where the 
pigs were kept, when they were not roaming 
as scavengers through the yards. ^ 

Hardship? Inhumanity? Not a bit of it! 
It was the best Mrs. Doolan could do for him, 
for she was poor herself and had four children 
to support; and she had done it with a good 
heart, telling Father Bacon she was only sorry 
she could not give the poor boy better quarters. 
As for Tooralladdy, he had knocked about so 
long, sleeping in boxes and doorways, and eat- 
ing what he could pick up or what he could 
earn by selling papers, that he thought himself 
mighty lucky when Father Bacon found a home 
for him and an assurance of regular meals in 
return for his care of the Doolans’ pigs. Be- 
fore he fell asleep he wondered, in a dreamy 
sort of way, whether Dillie and Cillie had more 
comfortable beds than his was, for it seemed to 
him the height of luxury; and if he could have 
seen the boy and girl chasing each other through 
the halls and up and down stairs in a final 
frolic before bedtime, he would probably have 
laughed again to hear Cillie cry, as Dillie gave 
her “ last tag” on the upper landing, “ On’y fer 
Tooralladdy I wudn’t be kotched!” 


CHAPTER Il‘ 


TOORALLADDY MEETS SENATOR DARBISON 

B REAKFxA.ST was an early meal at Senator 
Darbison’s house, and half past six, at the 
latest saw the family of four seated at the sim- 
ple but plentiful repast. 

Dillie and Cillie could not have told you so 
in words, perhaps, but they fully appreciated 
how delightful was everything that appealed 
to their five senses at that hour of a bright May 
morning. The long windows of the dining- 
room opened on a porch that overlooked the 
garden at the side east of the house, and there 
they stood, exclaiming at the jewels on the 
grass as the slant sunbeams turned the dew into 
gems that rivaled any chronicled in the Arabian 
Nights. From their own small, stunted or- 
chard, and from the scattered trees which 
struggled against the city smoke for existence 
in the back yards of their neighbors, there were 
twitterings and chirpings that indicated the 
presence of a few bold robins and saucy blue- 
birds; and the two yellow canaries in their 
23 


24 


TOORALLADDY MEETS 


cages at the windows were swelling their 
throats in an ecstasy of song. To the children’s 
untutored but appreciative sense of smell there 
was nothing incongruous between the mingled 
perfumes of sweet-scented shrub and syringa 
borne on the breeze and that appetizing odor of 
broiled ham, hot biscuits, and coffee that came 
to them from the breakfast table, to which they 
were soon summoned by the entrance of their 
father and mother. Good, healthy appetites they 
had, too, and an astonishing capacity for hot 
biscuits; but even that was eventually satisfied, 
and Gillie, who sat at her mother’s right and op- 
posite Dillie, who faced the window, was waiting 
for a favorable opportunity to raid the sugar 
bowl; a trick that was permitted her if she 
could accomplish it successfully, but which 
her mother made a feint of correcting. 

With her eyes on her mother’s face, who 
v^s ostensibly engaged in looking over the 
morning paper, and her fingers on two beautiful 
big lumps that would have been a feast for her- 
self and her brother. Gillie was startled by 
hearing Dillie exclaim: 

“There goes Tooralladdy ! ” 

Gillie screwed about suddenly in her chair and 
the sugar dropped with a clatter among the 
spoons as Mrs. Darbison turned toward the 


SENATOR DARBISON 


25 


window and gave Cillie’s knuckles an admoni- 
tory rap ; and the little girl laughed at her own 
defeated attempt, as she said: 

“ On’y fer Tooralladdy I wudn’t be kotched 
that time sure!” 

“Now, Cillie,” remonstrated Mrs. Darbi- 
son, “what kind of language is that.^” 
“That’s what Tim said, mama — ” 

“And how often have I told you that you 
must not pick up what Tim says, or Lucindy, 
or Tomaso, or any other child who you know 
speaks incorrectly. John, ” she cried, turning 
to her husband, “if these children are deter- 
mined to adopt all the slang and jargon they 
hear among their companions, something must 
be done. Either we must move away from 
this neighborhood, or I can not allow them to 
play outside of their own yard.” 

This threat evoked a wail from each of the 
children and an appealing glance at their 
father. They had heard it before, for it was a 
sort of periodical protest on the part of their 
mother, but it never failed of the desired effect. 
Often, in visiting some of their young friends 
in other parts of the city, they were made aware 
how restricted were other playgrounds in com- 
parison with their own, and they always 
returned home with self-congratulations that 


26 


TOORALLADDY MEETS 


“ our street ’’ was so good a place for play. They 
were somewhat reassured, however, in spite 
of their mother’s remark, when they saw their 
father give a nod of approval toward her, tem- 
pered by a half smiling frown; for he knew 
that the threat was only an admonitory switch 
she held over them, and that she really had no 
more serious objection than he had to their 
innocent games and plebeian friends ; and that 
her watchful care had duly detected the few 
black sheep among the host of children who 
populated the street and had put those few 
under ban. But as he now gravely nodded 
his acquiescence to her threat Dillie and Cillie 
hastened to enter their objections. 

“ It was only a joke, mama,” said the boy. 

“ It sounded so funny, you kno\V, when Tim 
said it,” interrupted Cillie; and she related 
the incident of the previous evening. 

“And who is this new boy.^” inquired their 
mother, “and why is he going through our 
yard .^” 

“ He’s the Doolan’s boy now, and he’s come 
after the pigs’ feed, ” replied Dillie. 

“ And he’s going to show me the pigs when- 
ever I want to see them, and Father Bacon sent 
him there, and he knows his geography well 
and Tim doesn’t, and Tim’s going to school 


SENATOR DARBISON 


27 


reg’lar,” put in Cillie, in a fine jumble of in- 
formation and ideas. 

“ All of which is very interesting and laudable 
and deplorable,” quizzed her father, smiling 
at Cillie, “though we don’t exactly know what 
it means ; but if the boy is going to be one among 
tliis infant democracy, I think it would be just 
as well if I made his acquaintance at once. 
Come along, little girl, and we’ll hear what the 
young gentleman has to say for himself. Come 
along, Dillie boy.” 

They left the table and went out through the 
open window, across the porch, down the side 
steps and along the garden walk toward the 
stable. Cillie, who never walked if she could 
run or skip or dance, put a little of each into 
her progress as she hung on her father’s arm 
and chattered away about anything and every- 
thing ; but she grew a little shy as they entered 
the wide stable door and saw the boy who had 
turned up last night filling two pails from the 
barrel that contained the refuse from the kit- 
chen; for, after all, he was almost a strange 
boy, and it is not always easy to talk to strangers 
when one is not playing games with them. 

“Goo’ mornin’,” said Tooralladdy, with a 
grin at the children and a soberer look that 
included their father; and he made toward his 


28 


TOORALLADDY MEETS 


ragged hat a motion that was meant to be man- 
nerly. 

“Good morning, Tooralladdy,” they all re- 
sponded; at which he grinned again at all 
three. 

“They tell me you are living at Mrs. Doo- 
lan’s,” said Senator Darbison. 

“Yes, sir,” answered the boy. 

“Will you tell me all about it.?^” asked the 
senator, half sitting on the feed box, while 
Gillie leaned against his arm and Dillie strad- 
dled a sawbuck. 

The steady gaze of three persons somewhat 
embarrassed the boy, but did not altogether 
abash him; he turned his excuse for a hat about 
in his hands while he repeated the story 
he had told Gillie the night before on the 
curbstone. 

“And how did Father Bacon get hold of 
you asked the senator, when the tale was 
told. 

“He picked me up long ago; I mean, las’ 
spring, ’bout a month ago.” 

“Picked you up ? Where ?” 

“In Parker’s Barracks.” 

“Is that where your parents live 

“I ain’t got none; they’re dead.” 

“Whom did you live with, then ?” 


SENATOR DARBISON 


29 


“My Uncle Dan.’’ 

“You say your name is Tracy. Is Big Dan 
Tracy your uncle 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Hm! Well, he’s not a very valuable asset,” 
said Senator Darbison, half musingly. 

“Sir .P” queried the boy. 

“I mean, he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be of 
much good to you or to any boy.” 

“Oh, he was good enough to me. He never 
bate me like — like his wife done. That’s why 
I runned away.” 

“Oh, you did!” 

“Yes, sir. She bate me, an’ then Uncle Dan 
bate her fer batin’ me, an’ then I runned away. 
An’ then, when I’d get hungry, I useter black 
boots an’ sell papers, but sometimes I didn’t 
make enough ter keep me ; an’ when I got good 
an’ hungry, I’d sneak up there an’ Uncle Dan’d 
gi’ me some cold victuals an’ some carpet to 
sleep on in the cellar. She wuddn’t leave me in 
the room.” 

“So that’s where Father Bacon found you, 
was it 

“Yes, sir. The night ol’ Granny Grogan 
died he come up to see her an’ he fell over me. 
I cuddn’t help it, sir,” he protested eagerly, 
“I never knowed he was cornin’, an’ he thought 


30 


TOORALLADDY MEETS 


it was a dog an’ giv me a shove wid his foot; 
an’ when I jumped up he axed me what was I 
doin’ in the cellar, an’ I tol’ him I was sleepin’ 
there. An’ then he caught me by the collar an’ 
hauled me out to a gas-lamp an’ looked at me. 
‘You come down to my school tomorrer,’ he 
sez, lookin’ like he had the toothache — he often 
looks that way when he don’t want to scold yer 
— ^‘an’ I’ll see what I kin do fer yer. An’ if yer 
don’t,’ he sez, ‘I’ll come up here after yer wid 
a policeman.’ ” 

“Weren’t you scared .P” asked Cillie, to whom 
a policeman meant dreadful possibilities. 

“Well, I hadn’t been doin’ nothin’ to him 
nor to nobody; an’ besides, I’d been to his 
school before, but he didn’t remember me. 
So when he seed me in the momin’ he know^ed 
me again an’ he said he had a good notion to 
lam me fer not cornin’ to school; but I tol’ him 
I had t’ earn my livin’ ’cause I cuddn’t live at 
Uncle Dan’s no more, ’count of his wife. He 
said he guessed that was purty tough, an’ which 
would I rather do, black boots or go to school ? 
I said I’d rather go to school if I cud make 
enough between wliiles to pay fer my grub, 
an’ I cud sleep next to Granny Grogan’s in 
the cellar. Then he tuk me over to the bakery 
an’ got me somethin’ to eat an’ tol’ me to stay 


SENATOR DARBISON 


31 


in the school till he’d see what he cud do about 
it. That’s the way I did fer about a week, sellin’ 
papers mornin’s an’ evenin’s an’ sleepin’ in the 
schoolhouse — ^he wuddn’t leave me sleep in 
the cellars; an’ then he tuk me down to Mrs. 
Doolan’s an’ I’ve been stayin’ there an’ takin’ 
care of the pigs an’ goin’ after the slop fer 
them twic’t a day, an’ doin’ odd jobs around 
while the boys is studyin’ their lessons.” 

“How long have have you been there now 
and how do you like the arrangement 

“I been there more’n a week an’ I like it 
first rate. I got a good bed an’ enough ter eat, 
an’ the pigs ain’t much trouble. Most mornin’s 
I get to school before ten o’clock, so I don’t 
miss much but joggerfy an’ spellin’ an’ I study 
them nights. Tim shows me the lessons an’ 
Father Bacon hears ’em at recess.” 

“How old are you, my boy?” 

“I’m near fourteen.” 

“H-m-m — ^you don’t look it.” 

“Father Bacon says I’m stunted in my 
growt ’cause I’ve been knockin’ ’round rough, 
but I’ll grow all right if I stay in a good home 
hke I’ve got now.” 

“I hope you will, my boy. And I hope you 
understand, too, what it means to a poor 
woman like Mrs. Doolan to take another boy 


32 


TOORALLADDY MEETS 


into her crowded rooms and undertake to feed 
him and look after him.” 

“Yes, sir, I do. I think I kin pay fer my 
keep in work, an’ make enough on the street 
to buy me some clothes. I don’t need much, 
you see;” and the garments he exhibited were 
so few and so threadbare, even ragged in 
places, that a person wondered whether they 
had ever been decent and new enough to have 
been bought and sold. 

“Well, you’re a plucky little chap, Tooral- 
laddy; and if Father Bacon takes an interest 
in you and you will be guided by him, you can 
make something of yourself, if you care to.” 

“I’m goin’ to drive hack fer Gorman as soon 
as I git big enough. He’s promised me the job.” 

“Good for you, Tooralladdy ! I see in you a 
coming business man! Some fine day, I sup- 
pose, you’ll be buying out Tom Gorman or 
setting up an express and hack business of 
your own.” 

The boy’s mouth expanded into one of the 
broad grins that made his wizened little face 
forget its accustomed mask of care and misery, 
but he made no other answer. 

Senator Darbison rose to leave the stable 
and Tooralladdy turned back to the task on 
which he had been engaged when his three 


SENATOR DARBISON 


33 


interviewers entered. Cillie and Dillie were 
very quiet; probably they had never before 
come face to face with real, distressful poverty, 
but had classed it as something that one reads 
about; legendary, like the fairy tales they 
reveled in and often made believe to enact in 
their own daily lives. 

“I’ll come Saturday when you won’t be at 
school, Tooralladdy, to see the dear little pig- 
gies,” said Cillie, pausing on the threshold of 
the carriage door. 

“Dear little piggies,” mocked Dillie, climb- 
ing down from the sawbuck. “Why will you 
be so silly, Cillie! The pigs are not dear or 
little. You know they’re big and grunty and 
smelly.” 

“Oh, but the little ones are dear!” Cillie 
insisted; “and they squeal just as cute!” 

“By the way, my boy,” said the senator, 
turning back, “where did you get that ridicu- 
lous name, Tooralladdy, and what does it 
mean ?” 

“Oh, that’s a song my granny taught me,” 
he answered with rather a sheepish laugh. “I 
useter sing it when I was a little feller, an’ dad 
an’ Uncle Dan began to call me by it, an’ now 
most every one does.” 

Tooralladdy had filled his pails and now 


34 


SENATOR DARBISON 


trudged cheerfully through the garden and 
down the street, the children accompanying 
him to the iron fence and stopping there for 
a swing on the heavy, creaking gate; while 
their father returned to the dining-room, where 
he found his wife filling the seed cups and 
bathtubs of the canaries’ cages. 


CHAPTER III 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 

^ ^ rilHAT seems like a decent little chap,” 
A Senator Darbison remarked to his 
wife on entering the dining-room, “and from 
what he tells me I fancy he has made a friend 
of Father Bacon. That is a recommendation 
in itself; but if he is to be another playfellow 
for Cillie and Dillie, perhaps you would better 
ask Father Bacon just what he knows about 
him. The only tiling I find against him, from 
his own report, is that he says Big Dan Tracy 
is his uncle.” 

“If that’s so, he comes from bad stock. 
However, he doesn’t look like a vicious boy — 
I watched him as he passed with his pails, so 
we won’t condemn him unheard. I’ll ask 
Father Bacon about him this afternoon at the 
Altar Society. Have you noticed,” Mrs. Dar- 
bison continued after a pause, “the crowd of 
boys that congregate after dark on and around 
Gallio’s cellar door at the corner 

“I’ve seen them there, but I haven’t noticed 
them particularly. Why 
25 


36 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


“I’m afraid they’re getting into mischief. 
That new helper at Gallio’s who recently came 
from Italy sits around there with them when 
he is not needed in the confectionery; and a 
man of his age — even though he can not be very 
old, judging by his appearance — is not a good 
companion for boys.” 

“Well, I don’t like his looks, for a certainty; 
and it seems to me that old Gallio told me once, 
when I was in there buying cigars, that he had 
to leave Italy in a hurry; to escape the law I 
believe.” 

“I knew it!” exclaimed Mrs. Darbison with 
a woman’s prompt conviction. “As sure as 
fate, he’ll lead those boys into mischief if he 
is allowed to associate with them.” 

She looked at her husband with an air that 
seemed to condemn him as a party to mischief, 
and he laughed at her earnestness. 

“Well what do you expect me to do?” he 
asked. “Am I to regulate my neighborhood 
as well as carry my ward and legislate for my 
district ? Let Lawrence look out for his boys ; 
two of them belong to that crowd. And Miss 
Grant might bring home her rattan from school 
and chastise that nephew of hers, who is grow- 
ing up an unlicked cub for want of a man’s 
hand at his helm. If Dillie showed any pro- 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


37 


pensity to join them I might take a hand; but, 
thank fortune! he’s too little, yet, to want to 
be a corner loafer!” 

“He never will want to!” protested Dillie’s 
mother indignantly. “I hope his home train- 
ing and his inherited tastes secure him from 
any such propensity as that. Oh, I know you 
were only teasing ; but I don’t like to hear you 
say those things, even in jest. Still, you might 
and could do something about those others. ” 

“ Shall I order them to disperse ^ Or shall 
I command Gallio to dismiss his recent im- 
portation ? Or shall I introduce a bill against 
loafing on cellar doors?” 

“Don’t be flippant, John; just think about 
it and do something, and that before very long, ” 
begged Mrs. Darbison, “ or harm will be done 
and it will be too late to act. ” 

“ I wonder why Gallio keeps that fellow — that 
new man, I mean, ” pursued the senator. “ He 
is continually quarreling with Luigi and Toma- 
so, and he certainly is not eflficient in the store; 
doesn’t know one brand of cigars from another 
and can not read — not English, at any rate. ” 
“People are saying that he has some claim 
on the old man; some claim of blood relation- 
ship — a nephew or cousin or something. That’s 
what ” 


38 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


“What Mrs. Thompson says.?” he asked 
quizzingly, as his wife paused. 

“Well, yes,” she acknowledged. “You 
know I don’t indulge in neighborhood gossip, 
but it’s impossible to stop that woman when 
she’s fairly and fully launched. She says ” 

“And her back door gives her a convenient 
vantage ground for observation in this case,” 
interrupted the senator. 

“She says that Cesare has an utterly brutal 
disposition which he vents in tyrannizing over 
Tomaso; and when Luigi interferes in his 
brother’s behalf, as is only natural, Cesare 
rages at him — ^in fact at them both — ^until Mrs. 
Thompson says she is sure he is half-crazy. 
Why the old man doesn’t put a stop to it I can 
not imagine, for on the whole he is good to his 
family, though not nearly as good or nice as 
Mrs. Gallio is. I really tliink there must be 
some truth in the story of relationship. Cesare 
doesn’t look unlike him, either.” 

“Well, I don’t like his looks, whoever he 
does or does not look like.” 

“Neither do I, John. I have warned the 
children, when they go into the store now for 
candy or fruit, not to tarry as they used to do 
unless Mrs. Gallio or one of the older girls is 
there. Indeed, they don’t seem at all inclined 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


39 


to do so, and they say they are afraid of Cesare, 
although he has never done or said an3i;hing 
rough to them. It is their instinctive dislike 
that warns me against him, I believe.” 

“ ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, ’ ” 
quoted the senator; and though he pretended 
to laugh indulgently at liis wife’s argument, 
he was half inclined to put some faith in the 
children’s dislike and her acceptance of it. 

While their parents discussed the newcomers 
in the neighborhood — Tooralladdy, of recent 
arrival, and Cesare, who had been for the past 
several months a member of the Italian family 
which conducted the little fruit shop and con- 
fectionery at the corner of the street — Dillie 
and Cillie, swinging on the front gate, talked 
over matters of greater interest to the juvenile 
democracy with one after another of their young 
friends who happened to pass or pause on their 
way to school or in pursuance of some house- 
hold errand. 

First came those who attended the parish 
school, better known as Father Bacon’s school. 
They were due at Mass at eight o’clock, and 
therefore made the earliest schoolward move 
each day. Shortly after them came those girls 
and those very small boys who attended the 
Academy; the little fellows entirely too infan- 


40 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


tile for even the “baby room” of either the 
public or the parochial school, and charitably 
taken in by the Sisters, as the mother of one of 
them gratefully remarked, “to keep them out 
of the gutters. ” 

Finally there appeared on doorsteps and in 
front yards, or even at desultory games in the 
street, the public school children, who lingered 
about their homes or dallied along the way until 
they saw Miss Grant setting forth; and when 
she had turned the corner and was out of sight 
the children followed by ones and twos and 
threes until the street was almost deserted. 

It was one of the morning pleasures for the 
enjoyment of which Cillie and Dillie daily 
swung on that creaking gate to see Miss 
Grant set forth from her prim little house, 
primly set in its prim little garden, herself as 
prim, in a pretty sort of way, as was her home. 
She was plump and fresh and rosy in spite 
of her fifty years, more than thirty of which had 
been spent in school-rooms; and the tliick 
brown curls that fell on her shoulders in the 
fashion that had outlasted her girlhood were 
still untouched by the frost of age. But she 
had acquired a decidedly dictatorial air and 
manner that stamped her indelibly as an iron 
ruler of would-be unruly boys; and her heavy 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


41 


tread, without elasticity, bespoke determination 
and irrevocable decision. At the prim little 
gate of her prim little garden she parted from 
her prim little old maiden aunt, with whom 
she lived, and who was in appearance just 
another Miss Grant with twenty-odd years 
added to her age — a Miss Grant with faded 
cheeks and white curls. 

In answer to the children’s “ Good morning. 
Miss Grant,” the little school-teacher returned 
a courteous greeting, as cordial as her primness 
would permit her to be in her intercourse with 
anything juvenile. She rather liked the Darbi- 
son children, who liked her, and were therefore 
always at their best with her, as children will 
naturally be when with those they love and 
admire. They used to fancy, and sometimes 
say to their mother, that it would be rather 
jolly to live in that cute little house with those 
cute little old ladies; but although she never 
sought to destroy their illusion, their mother 
could not but wonder whether the rigid rules 
of that elderly household were not warping the 
nature of the only young person in it, and 
driving him for companionship among associ- 
ates who might prove a detriment to him in the 
future. 

When the younger Miss Grant had disap- 


42 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


peared and the elder had re-entered her front 
door and closed it behind her, the side door of 
the house opened and gave exit to a tall, lanky 
boy of sixteen, nephew of the younger lady and 
grandnephew of the elder — the only boy, her 
neighbors said, whom Miss Grant could not 
control, and the one for whom Senator Darbison 
in conversation with his wife, had advised the 
application of her rattan. 

Harvey Grant crossed the street diagonally 
and entered the open door of Gorman’s stable, 
from which he issued in a moment or two with 
a boy of about his own age, who carried a stable 
broom and dragged after him a length of hose. 
It was evident that he had been interrupted in 
his morning’s work of washing the hacks and 
wagons which Gorman had for hire. The two 
boys stood talking for a short while and then 
Grant crossed the street again to a house ad- 
joining his own and whistled a signal to some- 
one within. The first signal was not answered, 
but at the second the tousled head of a boy 
appeared at an attic window. 

“Oh,” cried Cillie, who had been watch- 
ing the movements of the boys, because for 
some time, there had been no children of 
their own age passing by or stopping to 
engage their attention; “Oh! Bert’s just out 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


43 


of bed. He’ll be good and late for school!” 

‘‘Much he cares!” responded Dillie. “Now 
watch! I knew that’s what was up,” he de- 
clared, as Harvey displayed an expressive pan- 
tomime; that is, held up his left hand, the 
first and second fingers erect, the two other and 
the thumb doubled across the palm. Then 
they heard the boy at the window say : 

“When?” 

“ ’S evening,” answered Grant. 

“ It’s too cold, ” whined the other. 

“Oh, don’t be a sissy!” 

“Who’s going?” 

“Bill and I and anybody else that wants 
to,” said Grant; and Bill nodded emphatic- 
ally from the stable door. 

“ Well, I’ll think about it, ” said the boy in the 
attic; and he shut the window and went away 
while Harvey and Bill returned to the stable. 

“Well, Dillie, I hope you’ll never be doing 
that,” exclaimed Gillie with an air of disgust. 
“Before I’d go swimming in a dirty sewer ” 

“Tisn’t the sewer! I’ve told you that be- 
fore.” 

“Well, it’s so near the sewer that it might 
as well be in it. You saw, yourself, how 
greasy and black and nasty the water looked 
all round there the day papa took us down 


44 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


to the Water Works. But that’s just like boys. 
They like to go there because they have to sneak 
away to do it. If their mothers and fathers 
would let them go, they wouldn’t want to.” 

Cillie was evidently quoting some one else, 
and Dillie made no answer, as he was quite 
willing to drop the subject. To tell the truth, 
he did secretly look forward to the time when 
the swimming signal, two fingers held up, 
should be made to him by some of the larger 
boys; for it was the accepted custom of the 
street for the big boys to allow or disallow, as 
the humor took them, their smaller companions 
the privilege of the swimming-hole, which 
was situated at a point just above the junction 
of the trunk sewer with the river. Dillie 
himself did not altogether relish the proximity 
of the sewer; but he imagined that the delight 
of going swdmming might compensate him 
for that discomfort. Besides, his father had 
learned to swim there, and why should not he ? 
Just at present, however, he was interested 
in watching Harvey Grant and learning what 
other boys he was enticing to the evening’s 
frolic; but as Harvey went back to the stable 
and remained there Dillie’s source of informa- 
tion was cut off. 

When all the school children had passed 


THE SWIMMING SIGNAL 


45 


and the street was quiet and deserted for the 
morning, except for little toddlers too young 
for any class-room, Cillie and Dillie went in- 
doors and began their own school work, wliich 
was carried on from nine o’clock until noon 
every day under their mother’s supervision. 
Sometimes the twins thought they would like 
to go to a real school; but as Dillie could not 
go to the convent, nor Cillie to the college, 
they concluded that mama’s school was the 
best and nicest, after all; especially as it was 
as much as possible like a real school, with 
desks, maps, a blackboard, globes, half-hour 
bells, good notes, bad notes, averages and all 
the things that the children who went to real 
schools talked about or ‘‘played” in their 
hours of leisure. 


f 


« % 




4 








I 


r 



V 







I 


CHAPTER IV 


THE DROWNING 

P LAY-TIME followed immediately after 
school-time in the juvenile democracy 
that I am telling you about ; but usually, in the 
late afternoon, between school-time and supper- 
time, the girls played what the boys contemptu- 
ously termed “Mothers”; a game that called 
for much visiting back and forth from 
vestibule to areaway, from front porch to 
basement steps, or wherever the young house- 
keepers set up their airy and furnitureless 
abodes ; and it included dolls of various kinds, 
sizes, and degrees, and bits of silk, woolen, 
cotton or linen stuff which were fashioned into 
garments wherewith the dolls were clothed. 

While the girls were engaged in their own 
pursuits, the boys played marbles, or spun 
tops, or flew kites, or walked on stilts, or played 
hopscotch, leapfrog, nigger-baby, duck-on-a- 
rock, or any one of a score of merry games 
with wLich resourceful boys fill in their frolic- 
some hours. Some of the girls, and especially 
47 


48 


THE DROWNING 


Cillie Darbison and Miss Marget Ann Gift, 
liked these better than girl’s games and often 
forsook the “mothers” to join in the boy’s 
sports; and let me tell you that the boys ac- 
corded that privilege as a great honor to the 
girls, not many of whom were considered worth 
wliile to bother with when it came to real hard 
play. It was not necessary, either, for Dillie 
and Heavenly to champion their respective 
sisters, as the girls w’ere expert at every game I 
have mentioned except leapfrog, which they 
were forbidden to play; but I have seen them 
so agile in “skinning over” a fence, so 
deft in rolling a barrel under their feet, so sure- 
footed on stilts, so level-headed in walking 
a rail, that I am sure they would have 
been equally skilful at leapfrog. Indeed, 
Dillie and Heavenly said they were; and 
surely brothers ought to know. Lucy Law- 
rence used sometimes to say that she would 
not for the world be such a boy-girl or tomboy 
as Cillie Darbison; of course what Miss 
Marget Ann did didn’t count, for after all, 
she was only a little colored child and couldn’t 
be expected to know how to behave; she 
(Lucy) would not for the world play such 
rough games ! And then Lucindy Elviry 
Jane, who was a girl-girl of the most pro- 


THE DROWNING 


49 


nounced type and squealed at the sight of a 
caterpillar or a worm, made shiny eyes at the 
boy-girls and said, “Sho ’nuff, Lucy;” but the 
boy-girls only laughed and retorted that boys’ 
games were much more fun than girls’ and 
they’d trade their one-cent dolls and doll- 
clothes for marbles or tops or jacks any time; 
but not their big dolls, because they were so 
pretty and they had had them so long. Cil- 
lie’s was a beauty, with wax head and hands 
and real curly hair; and though Miss Marget 
Ann’s was only composition, with hair oi iamb’s 
wool, it was as well cared for and as dearly 
loved as was Cillie’s, the doll aristocrat of 
the street. 

It was from such chat as this that Gillie 
was summoned to her supper on the evening 
of the day when Tooralladdy made the ac- 
quaintance of Senator Darbison; and she 
was discussing with her father, at the table 
the different kinds of girls she knew, and 
wondering why it was that some girls were 
so girlly and so squeally and so ’fraidy, when 
there came in at the open window, from the 
street, the sound of Lucindy Elviry Jane’s 
shrill voice in a high-pitched song that quavered 
upward in many repetitions of just two lines 
of doggerel : 


50 


THE DROWNING 


“When I git drunk, 1 git drunk on my own, 

If nobody don’t like it, they kin let it alone.” 

Each time she repeated the lines the child 
laughed mockingly; and as the song grew 
fainter and fainter, it was evident that she 
was retreating either up or down the street. 

“That’s a performance that ought to be 
stopped,” said Mrs. Darbison. “I wonder 
that Jane permits one of her children to carry 
on so.” 

“Hev says his mother does lam her for it 
every time she catches Lucindy at it,” put in 
Dillie, “but she does it just the same the very 
next time she sees old man Giffen coming 
home drunk.” . 

“Cesare gave her a stick of peppermint 
candy for it one day and said he’d give her 
another every time she did it, ’cause she made 
him think of the crazy people in his own 
country,” said Cillie. 

“Cesare again!” said Mrs. Darbison sig- 
nificantly to her husband. 

“Cesare isn’t the only one to blame in this 
instance,” he answered, looking through the 
dining-room window and diagonally across 
the lawn to the opposite side of the street. 
“From here I can see two women and three 
men, as well as a number of children, watching 


THE DROWNING 


51 


Elviry’s antics and laughing at them. The 
child really dances like an imp, or as if she 
were possessed.” 

Cillie turned in her chair to catch a glimpse 
of the drunkard’s tormentor and saw the 
little colored girl leaping and whirling and 
flaunting her skirts in front of the man, Giffen, 
but just out of his reach. 

Giffen — “Mr. Giffen,” when he was sober, 
and “old man Giffen” when he was drunk — was 
not at all an old man, but one in the prime of 
life, about forty -five years of age. He lived in 
the Welsh Yard, and was, for perhaps twenty- 
five days in the month, a sober, industrious and 
inoffensive man ; but the other five days found 
him besotted with liquor, and then his miser- 
able wife and several children felt the weight 
of his hand and the force of his foot; and, 
for this few days’ indulgence, they felt always 
the pinch of poverty. Ordinarily, Giffen 
slouched along as the generality of laboring 
men do ; but, singularly enough, when he was 
drunk he was unusually upright in his walk 
and paced slowly along with his head erect 
and his hands thrust as deep as he could get 
them into his trousers pockets. His neighbors 
used jokingly to say that it was with his hands 
that he held himself erect and avoided the 


52 


THE DROWNING 


staggering gait of the drunken man; and per- 
haps that was time, for now he made a futile 
snatch at Lucindy Elviry Jane and lunged 
perilously near to a fall, so that Cillie drew 
her breath sharply, expecting to see him prone 
on his face. The impish child ducked under 
his arm, finishing her tantalizing couplet with 
a derisive laugh in which the spectators joined, 
and old man Giffen with difficulty regained 
his equilibrium and thrust his hands again 
into his pockets, stalking slowly and majes- 
tically down the street with head thrown back 
and seemingly quite oblivious of the onlookers. 

“There is Cesare now,” said Senator Dar- 
bison; “he is egging the child on. Positively, 
this is outrageous ! Somebody ought to thrash 
him!” And he rose hastily from his chair and 
went out on the side porch. 

“And there’s Tooralladdy,” supplemented 
Cillie. 

The little knot of people surrounding old 
man Giffen had by this time gone out of ear- 
shot of the Darbisons; but the latter now saw 
Dave Giffen, a lad of about fifteen, approach 
Cesare and speak to him warmly and insist- 
ently, at which the Italian laughed and jeered — 
they could hear that cruel, loud laugh — and 
made some reply accompanied by an imita- 


THE DROWNING 


53 


tion of old man Giffen’s stately walk. Dave 
spoke again, and the several grown persons 
who had been witnesses to the whole pitiful 
performance sobered at once and seemed to 
realize, suddenfy, that there was another and 
a sorrowful side to it. Cesare lost his temper 
and broke out into exclamations in his native 
tongue, threatening Dave with uplifted hand 
while the boy persistently stood in his path 
and prevented the Italian from following his 
father. Cesare finally turned and retraced 
his steps to the store whence he had come, 
talking violently as he went and turning to 
shake a threatening fist at Dave. Mean- 
while, Tooralladdy had scattered the children 
right and left, and seizing Lucindy Elviry 
Jane by the arm, stopped her wild gyrations. 
The girl objected and tried to jerk herself 
free; but, supple as she was, her strength was 
no match for his, and she was about to resort to 
catlike tactics, scratching and clawing, which 
would doubtless have earned for her a sound 
cuffing from Tooralladdy’s free hand, when 
higher authority stepped in. 

“Yo' Lucindy Elviry Jane! Come yah, yo’ 
limb o’ Satan! Ah’ll dance ye! Yo’ Heavenly 
Gif’! Eotch that chile yah, till ah lam huh 
good ! Ain’t I done tol’ yo’ oveh an’ oveh, yo’ 


54 


THE DROWNING 


low down traish, to min’ yo’ own bisnus an’ let 
that white man alone ? Oh, yo’ kin dance fo’ 
me ” 

And so on, in a pauseless strain, Jane Gift’s 
voice was heard, while Heavenly dashed from 
some unseen quarter into the fray and dragged 
the unwilling and now loudly weeping culprit 
out of Tooralladdy’s grasp and toward their 
greatly incensed parent, who awaited them in 
the doorway of her basement rooms. Shortly 
afterward, loud shrieks and wails and sobs pro- 
claimed that to the freakish and disobedient 
Lucindy Elviry Jane the broad maternal hand 
was meting out the just punishment of her 
misdemeanor and that Jane was living up to 
her standard of raising her cliildren “decent 
an’ perlite. ” 

Such a frequent occurrence as old man Giffen’s 
diTinken home-coming was not of sufficient 
moment to make much of a ripple in the current 
of children’s lives, and within an hour after 
supper-time it was almost forgotten. In the 
twilight, the girls walked up and down the 
pavement with their arms about one another’s 
waists, or sat on doorsteps and compared “ charm 
strings” of buttons, which were the collection 
fad of that day; buttons of every description, 
but no two alike, strung on light cords and ex- 


THE DROWNING 


55 


hibited, as one’s collection grew, for the envy 
and admiration of one’s companions. 

The boys were busy with their own games 
as long as daylight lingered; but when it grew 
too dark for marbles and hoops they gravitated 
toward Wolfe’s lamp-post, which stood about 
midway of the square, and sat on the curbstone 
or lolled against the iron fence until somebody 
suggested “There Goes a Blackbird through 
the Window;” and then, in a twinkling, there 
was a ring of boys and girls in the centre of the 
street that stretched from curb to curb, and 
their fresh young voices rose in the song of the 
game until even some of the grown-ups were 
following the air and the words. 

“Where’s that new boy.^” inquired Lucy 
Lawrence after a short time. 

“You mean Tooralladdy ” asked Gillie. “I 
haven’t seen him this evening.” 

“Ah, ain’t seen Tim Doolan, neitheh,” said 
Miss Marget Ann. “ Reckon the pigs is trouble- 
some an’ they can’t git away. ” 

The games lagged somewhat. Lucindy El- 
viry Jane was “kep’ in” as a punishment for 
“pokin’ fun at ol’ man Giffen,” Miss Marget 
Ann said, and that put a damper on the joy- 
ousness of her sister and brother; for the three 
were very loyal to one another. Tim Doolan 


56 


THE DROWNING 


and several other boys were missing, and 
Tooralladdy, the new boy, who had entered 
into the children’s sports so heartily on the 
previous evening that he seemed an old friend, 
was looked for and asked for in vain. 

Some time after eight o’clock Tim Doolan 
was sighted with a huge basket on his arm; and, 
being hailed, reported that he had been carrying 
some fine washing to a lady for whom his 
mother worked; but he announced that as soon 
as he had put the basket away he would 
come back and have some fun. 

“And bring Tooralladdy,” several children 
cried. 

“Ain’t he hcre.^” inquired Tim, scanning 
the group. Then a slow and comprehensive 
smile spread over his freckled face and up into 
his tousled hair as he said : 

“ I bet I know where he is. ” 

“Where.?” 

“ Gone swimmin’. They ain’t a single feller 
up on Gallio’s cellar door an’ nobody but Luigi 
in the store. Tooralladdy an’ Dave Giffen 
went off right after supper an’ I seen ’em talkin’ 
to Bill Gorman at the stable door, but I ain’t 
seen any of the fellers since.” 

“That’s so,” said Dillie, “they did go 
swimming this evening; I saw Harvey Grant 


THE DKOWNING 


57 


making the sign to Bert Little this morning, 
and then I saw Tomaso and Harvey and Bill 
and Bert going up street together after supper. 
Say! Here comes Tooralladdy now.” 

And here, indeed, came a woebegone and 
distressed Tooralladdy, very different from the 
light-hearted boy they had played with last 
night. He was barefooted and carried his 
jacket in his hand; and the gas-light shone on 
his plastered hair, wet from his river bath. He 
was panting, too, as though he had been run- 
ning fast and hard, and the river was six or 
eight blocks distant. He came from the alley- 
way belonging to Wolfe’s house, by which the 
children knew that he had come across “the 
lot” (as they called the vacant square just 
south of their street) and over fences and 
through back yards, thus avoiding both Gallio’s 
corner at one end of the street and the Welsh 
Yard at the other. 

The children saw at once that something out 
of the ordinary had happened, and stopped 
short in their game, but Tooralladdy passed 
them by without notice and went on to the 
Darbison house, where the senator and his wife 
were sitting on the long balcony outside of the 
library windows, and paused there, panting, 
and looking up at them without speaking. 


58 


THE DROWNING 


“Well?” said Senator Darbison, leaning 
forward on the balcony rail. Then the boy 
drew a long sobbing breath and said, almost 
inaudibly : 

“ He ^he’s drownded. ” 

“ Drowned ! Who ? ” 

The man and woman were instantly on their 
feet, questioning the boy eagerly, and the chil- 
dren in the street drew near, instinctively feeling 
the touch of horror in the air. 

“Who is drowned?” asked Senator Dar- 
bison again; and Tooralladdy, terrified bearer 
of sad tidings, gasped: 

“Dave; Dave Giffen.” 

Some of the children instantly scurried away 
to carry the story to their homes, and 
marvellously soon, it seemed to Tooralladdy, 
he was the center of a group that plied him 
with questions; but he paid little heed to any 
but Senator Darbison, to whom he related the 
whole story, while the rest listened and ex- 
changed comments among themselves. 

Tooralladdy told the story in detail; how 
the twelve or fifteen boys, including Cesare, 
had gone down to the swimming-hole and, for 
a time, had amused themselves di\dng off the 
barges, moored inshore, and swimming out to 
the dredge boat some distance out in the stream; 


THE DROWNING 


59 


how they had ‘‘dared” one another to all 
sorts of feats and performed even the more 
daring, protected by that Providence that 
watches over the foolhardy; how finally Dave, 
a clever and fearless swimmer, and Cesare, 
not less expert, had struck out for a coal barge 
lying some distance away; and how Cesare 
had reached the barge, swum around it, and 
then clambered on top, calling for help, not 
for himself, but for Dave who, he said, had 
been drawn under the barge. Dave had dis- 
appeared, and one of the others, diving time 
and again where Cesare said he had gone down 
had failed to find him; and at last they had 
given up the search and were coming home, 
bringing Dave’s clothes with them; but he, 
Tooralladdy, had run ahead to tell Mr. Dar- 
bison — and there he stopped. 

“Tell me what?” 

“Nothing; that’s all,” said the boy, hesi- 
tatingly and looking pathetically at the crowd 
of people who had listened to his recital. 

“But why did you want to tell me?” 

“ I — I — I thought maybe you’d tell his 
mother. ” 

Alas! the poor lad’s bereaved mother had 
already heard the terrible news and now came 
weeping into the street from her squalid rooms 


60 


THE DROWNING 


to learn from her boy’s companions the meager 
details they were able to give her of his drown- 
ing. They came in a group, awed and silent 
all but Cesare, who was voluble enough for all, 
and in his broken English repeated again and 
again his story of the calamity. 

Sorrow and tragedy took the place of chil- 
dren’s games and the peace of a quiet neighbor- 
hood; and even the reprehensible Giffen, 
sobered by sorrow, came in for a share of 
sympathy. Dave was a good boy and his 
mother’s mainstay; and she never saw him 
again, even in death, for his body was never 
recovered. His untimely death weighed upon 
all who knew him, but on none it seemed, more 
than on Tooralladdy. 

“I like that boy, Tooralladdy,” said Senator 
Darbison, later, when the excitement had calmed 
down, the street was silent, and he and his 
wife stood on their balcony alone. “I like 
his thought for poor Mrs. Giffen and his wish 
that some one should break the news to her. ” 

“Yes; the others seemed frightened, but he 
was grieved as well. And what’s more, ” added 
Mrs. Darbison, sagely, “he knows more than 
he told.” 

“What do you mean.^^” the man asked 
turning to her quickly. 


THE DROWNING 


61 


“ Didn’t you notice his hesitation in finishing 
the story and how lamely it went in comparison 
with the rest ? ” 

“ But I attributed that to the boy’s fear and 
horror. ” 

“Fear and horror of what 
“Of the drowning, of course. What else.^” 
“Partly, yes; but not altogether. Just you 
wait and see, John; you’ll hear more of this,” 
she replied; and more than that she would not 
say. 








CHAPTER V 


gillie’s cukiosity 

I T was Monday evening when Tooralladdy 
made his first appearance among the chil- 
dren who enjoyed the delights of living in a no- 
thoroughfare neighborhood; Tuesday morning 
when he made the acquaintance of Senator 
Darbison and engaged that gentleman’s in- 
terest; Tuesday evening when he returned 
from the season’s first swimming frolic to carry 
bad news into the quiet neighborhood, so that, 
on Wednesday morning, his acquaintance with 
the members of the family extended over a 
period of scarcely thirty -six hours and counted 
only three meetings. Yet, when he came with 
his pails on Wednesday morning and passed 
down the flagged walk toward the stable, it 
was not the aroma of coffee and the faint tinkle 
of spoons and knives and forks that made him 
glance shyly into the pleasant dining-room. 
It was an undefined feeling that here were 
sympathetic hearts, and, in the case of the man, 
at least, a shrewd judge and a sturdy champion 
if need arose. 


64 


cillie’s curiosity 


As the boy almost paused in passing, Senator 
Darbison, who was looking out at him, noted 
the wistful expression on his face and with a 
man’s blundering though well-intentioned kind- 
ness called out: 

“Good morning, Tooralladdy! Have you 
had your breakfast ?” 

The boy’s face flushed, and with a brief “Yes, 
sir; thank you,” he was about to hasten on 
down the walk; but Mrs. Darbison rose and 
went out on the porch. 

“Good morning, Edward,” she said. “Will 
you come up to the pantry door as you come 
from the stable ? I’d like to talk to you about 
poor Dave, and I shall be in the pantry for 
some time after breakfast.” 

Tooralladdy looked sharply at her before 
answering, but at last he said: 

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll come.” 

“Did I put my foot in it as usual, my dear ? ” 
inquired her husband as she returned to the 
table. “I thought the boy looked in rather 
hungrily.” 

“He did, but he was hungry for sympathy 
and companionship, not for food. Probably 
he spent a restless and sleepless night. Indeed, 
I should not be surprised if he cried, as any 
child might, under the circumstances, even 


gillie’s curiosity 


65 


though he has known hardship and sorrow all 
his life long and but little else.” 

“No doubt. I felt that, too — ” 

“I know you did,” interrupted Mrs. Dar- 
bison. 

“But you know the proverbial road to a 
man’s heart; and a boy’s is not so very dif- 
ferent.” 

“I wonder,” mused Dillie, “whether he 
slept last night with the pigs.” 

“He doesn’t sleep with the pigs!” pro- 
tested Cillie, indignantly. “His room — his 
bed, I mean — is quite separate from them; 
there’s a door between — ” 

“A gate, ” Dillie corrected. 

“No, a door. Jessie Wolfe said that Tim 
and Tooralladdy had made a wall out of the 
fence that used to be there, and there’s only 
a few cracks left in it, so’s Tooralladdy can see 
the pigs at night if he wants to.” 

“What for would he want to.^” asked the 
matter-of-fact Dillie; but Cillie ignored this 
question and calmly pursued the current of the 
previous conversation. 

“Besides, he didn’t sleep there last night; 
he slept up-stairs with Tim, ’cause Mrs. Doolan 
was over at Mrs. Giffen’s room and she wanted 
Tooralladdy to stay with Tim and the children.” 


66 


cillie’s curiosity 


“Well, how on earth do you know that ?” 
queried her brother, looking at his enterprising 
sister in the admiring way in which his more 
conservative disposition paid tribute to her 
leadership. 

“It’s not yet half past six, but you seem to 
have been improving the shining hour with a 
vengeance in the way of news-gathering,” said 
Cillie’s father, glancing from her to the clock. 

The little girl looked at her mother appre- 
hensively and saw on her face, too, a look of 
expectancy; so she replied with rather a shame- 
faced air: 

“Maria told me when I went to the kitchen 
for my milk.” 

“I wondered why you were so thirsty for 
your milk this morning,” said Mrs. Darbison, 
significantly. “It seems you were thirsty for 
gossip, as well as for milk.” 

Cillie made no reply. She was so often re- 
proved for undue inquisitiveness that she felt 
a rebuke even when it was not put into words. 

Breakfast over, Dillie started for the big iron 
gate to spend the usual hour or so in chat with 
the children passing by; but Cillie lingered on 
the porch and finally said, as her mother was 
filling the canaries’ seed cups: 

“Can I do anything for you in the pantry, 


gillie’s curiosity 


67 


mama ? Measure sugar or flour or anything ?” 

“Thank you, Cillie; I haven’t more than 
usual to do today, so I shall not need you ; and, 
besides, I prefer to talk to Tooralladdy alone.” 

“You poor little sinner!” exclaimed her 
father, sympathetically, “when will you learn 
to keep that inquiring mind of yours within 
the bounds of legitimate curiosity?” 

Cillie went and snuggled close up to him, 
sure of his commiseration, if not of his abetting. 

“Hadn’t you better go and square things 
with mama ?” he whispered in her ear; for he 
saw that the birds were receiving an unusual 
amount of attention and guessed the reason 
why; that Cillie was being offered a chance to 
make amends. 

“What’s the use ?” urged the little girl. “I’m 
always doing it again and mama gets so dis- 
gusted with me.” 

“ ‘Not seven times, but seventy times seven 
times,’ ” he quoted; and Cillie knew what that 
meant. 

“I’m sorry, mama,” she said, at last. “I 
don’t want to be a gossip, but I want to know 
things so hard that I just can’t help asking 
questions and listening sometimes.” 

“Then, how am I to know you’re really 
sorry 


68 


gillie’s curiosity 


‘‘I don’t know,” answered the small culprit. 
The position was beyond the logic of her mind. 

“We’ll just have to believe her when she says 
she’s sorry, mama, and keep on believing her 
until she forgets again or reforms,” said her 
father. 

Cillie looked from one to the other, her hands 
clutched together behind her back and a woe- 
ful expression on her round face. 

“Cillie! Cillie! Why don’t you come out.?” 
called Dillie, from his perch on the gate. 

“May I go, mama.?” she asked, knowing 
that consent meant forgiveness and refusal was 
by way of punishment. 

“Yes, you may go,” was the sentence, de- 
livered with a smile; and Cillie flew at her 
mother and gave her a big bear hug before she 
dashed down the porch steps and out to the 
gate. So she heard nothing of what Tooral- 
laddy may have said when he went to the pan- 
try; and though the sad happening of the pre- 
vious evening was, of course, the principal 
subject of conversation among the children, 
Cillie was neither as inquisitive nor as com- 
municative concerning it as was her wont to be 
on neighborhood matters. 


CHAPTER VI 


CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 

T he gloom of Dave Giffen’s sad and sudden 
taking off put a damper on the children’s 
play for several evenings following, and there 
was more quiet on the gay little street for the rest 
of that week than there had been for months. 
The girls told one another ghost stories, and 
Miss Marget Ann was a prime favorite, as she 
could relate with blood-cuidling voice and 
round, awful eyes, tales of “harnts” and “jack- 
o-me-lantruns” that her old mother, with the 
superstition of her race, had brought from the 
South. 

On Gallio’s cellar door the larger boys 
gathered every evening; and whenever Cesare 
came out from the store to join them, the talk 
there naturally reverted to the one topic that 
engrossed the neighborhood. The Italian 
went over the incidents of the drowning again 
and again, and as his story lengthened in repeti- 
tion it grew also in detail of the efforts he had 
made to rescue Dave before he himself climbed 


69 


70 


CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 


up on the sand barge and shouted to the rest 
of the boys to come to his aid. 

Tooralladdy did not appear among the 
children on Wednesday evening nor on Thurs- 
day evening, and Tim, when questioned, 
could not say where he was; but, strangely 
enough, on Thursday evening Luigi Gallio 
found him apparently skulking in the narrow 
side passage that gave access to the confection- 
ery from the quiet, no-thoroughfare street. 

“What are you doing here the young man 
demanded, not unkindly. 

“I was just listening to Cesare,” answered 
Tooralladdy. 

“And why don’t you go out there with the 
other fellows instead of hanging around in 
here 

“I — I just only wanted to listen,” said Too- 
ralladdy again; “I didn’t want him to see me.” 

Luigi looked at him sharply for a minute and 
then said: 

“Well, don’t hang around here too long. And 
don’t join Cesare’s gang, either,” he added as 
he turned away. 

“No, sir,” responded the boy, very heartily. 

By Saturday the natural rebound of the 
youthful democracy to their wonted joyous- 
ness and the old accustomed routine of the 


CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 71 

day held sway. Cillie, mindful of her agree- 
ment with Tooralladdy, asked and obtained 
her mother’s permission to go and see Mrs. 
Doolan’s “dear little piggies;” but when she 
urged Dillie to accompany her, he sniffed con- 
temptuously, or as though his sense of smell 
were as reminiscent of former visits as he desired, 
and refused; and he said some things about 
the “ dear little piggies ” that were far from 
complimentary; so Cillie went off by herself. 

The fence that shut off the Welsh Yard ran 
diagonally across the end of the street, and the 
gate usually stood open; for the Welsh Yard 
was common property and was used as a short 
cut to Drain street and so to the eastern end 
of the town. The place was not inviting. The 
uneven ground, hard-trodden in dry weather, 
was a snare for unwary feet on account of its 
rough, lumpy surface; and when it rained 
there were puddles so many, in spite of the 
downward slope of the yard, that the place was 
like a marsh. 

As Cillie paused a moment at the gate, on 
this particular morning, she saw it in its dry 
aspect ; a well-baked stretch of ground, littered 
here and there with ash barrels, slop cans, a 
washing outfit, several pieces of discarded 
and broken furniture, and other indescribable 


72 CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 

debris. The Welsh Chapel was the nearest ' 
building to her on the left; a painfully plain 
wooden structure with a wide, barnlike, double 
door in the center and great square windows 
at either side. Beyond this was the tenement 
house that gave the place its name; a regular 
barrack, all open windows and doors and with 
a general air of publicity and unloveliness. 
Cillie wondered for a brief instant how people 
could live in so ugly a place, and mentally con- 
trasted it with the green lawn at home; but 
just at that moment her attention was at- 
tracted by an altercation going on at the far 
end of the yard, where a row of sheds, each 
with its padlocked door, marked the boundary 
of the yard and answered the purposes of a 
cellar where the tenants of the big, ill-con- 
structcd barracks might store away their coal 
and kindling. 

In front of one of these sheds stood the 
redoubtable Mrs. Doolan, her sleeves rolled up 
to her shoulders and her arms still flecked with 
soapsuds from the steaming tub near the door. 
She was brandishing an open red hand upward 
at a huddled figure on the roof of the shed, and 
her rich brogue, that Cillie always loved to 
hear for the kindness and softness of its tones, 
was now hoarse with passion and anger. 


CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 73 

Wondering what could have come over the 
motherly, gentle woman to change her so, the 
little girl drew near to the shed, and as she did 
so, the figure on the roof turned over and 
showed his face. It was Cesare. He was 
sprawled out the full length of the slanting roof, 
his body almost invisible on account of the 
slope; and his dark, wicked face leered at the 
woman below him, his chin in his hand and 
his elbow on the edge of the roof. Whether 
he took the pose deliberately or unconsciously 
it is impossible to say; but as Cillie and Mrs. 
Doolan saw him, he was an evil counterpart 
of one of the little cheiaibs under the feet of 
the Blessed Virgin in a picture which they both 
knew well. 

When Cillie had come quite close to Mrs. 
Doolan, but a little behind her, she heard 
blows resounding on the inside of the shed 
door and a smothered voice crying repeatedly: 

“Lemme out! Lemme out! Lemme out!” 

“Hahve you the kay.^” demanded the irate 
Mrs. Doolan of the leering person on the roof. 

“Oi hahven’t the kay,” mocked that wicked 
imp. 

“Fwat’s thaht but the kay in your hahnd, ye 
black divil ye, lockin’ me little b’y in the shed !” 

“Fwat’s thaht but the black one in the shed 


74 


CESAEE SHOWS HIS TEETH 


and no Teem Doola’ b’y,” retorted Cesare, 
mingling brogue and broken English. 

“Come down out o’ thaht, ye spalpeen, an’ 
give me the kay, or Oi’ll hahve the law on ye!” 

Cesare’s knowledge of Enghsh was too 
limited to tell him that “the law” meant a 
policeman, so the threat had no effect ; he only 
jeered again at the clamoring boy and the 
furious woman and glanced casually at Cillie; 
and he was so much engaged with the audience 
directly in front of him that he did not observe 
a figure that darted out from the basement 
room which was part of Mrs. Doolan’s holding 
and ran swdftly down the length of the barracks 
to where the house and the sheds came closest 
together at right angles. It was Tooralladdy; 
and Cillie, who was watching, saw him disap- 
pear at the back of the sheds, and wondered 
what he could be about; for she was sure, from 
his haste and stealthiness, that he had some 
plan of action on foot. 

In a moment there was a yell and a squirm 
from Cesare, who tried to turn over to look back 
at the end of the shed; but he seemed unable 
to do so. A tirade of Italian followed which 
was unintelligible to those in front; but his 
face and his voice indicated profanity, and 
his “Queet dat! Let-a go da laig!” that occa- 


CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 


75 


sionally broke through the stream of Italian, 
told them that he was held fast in his uncom- 
fortable position by some one at the rear of the 
shed. 

“Give her the key!” said a muffled voice 
that might have come from inside the shed or 
from behind it; and when the demand had 
been repeated several times and Cesare at last 
found it expedient to comply, his first care was 
to draw up his long legs and rub his bruised 
shins, squatting on the roof like a tailor on 
his bench. 

Meantime, Mrs. Doolan, picking up the 
key and continuing her angry protests, opened 
the door of the shed and let out Tim, red with 
anger as well as with the heat of the close 
quarters, and Cesare, when he saw him, was 
evidently surprised and glanced quickly down 
the back passageway after his recent tormentor; 
but the latter had disappeared as swiftly and 
silently as he had come. 

“Teem een-a da shaid!” Cesare exclaimed. 
“Where-a Tooladda.^” and he looked toward 
the Doolans’ open door. 

No one answered him. Tim was telling his 
mother how the door had been slammed and 
locked on him while he was getting coal for 
the kitchen stove, and how his blows on the 


76 CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 

door and his yells to be let out — ^which had 
finally brought her to his rescue — had only 
resulted in taunts from his late tormentor. 

When his story came to an end it was found 
that Cesare had disappeared from the shed; 
and as they caught a last glimpse of him limp- 
ing through the gate to the street, Tooralladdy 
made a dash from the sheds to the kitchen 
door and slammed it after him. Cillie, Mrs. 
Doolan, and Tim followed him, and when they 
reached the kitchen Tim asked with a grin : 

“What did you do to him, Tooralladdy 

“Grabbed his ankles where they stuck over 
the edge of the shed and hung on till I like to 
broke ’em; and I msht I had!” answered 
Tooralladdy, viciously. “I bet he’ll be sore 
for a week!” 

“Why did he want to keep you in the shed, 
Timmie.^” queried Cillie. 

“I dunno,” said Tim; but Tooralladdy in- 
terrupted tersely: 

“He thought it was me. He’s got somethin’ 
ag’iti me, an’ that’s the reason.” 

“Fwat hahve yez been doin’ till him ?” 
asked Mrs. Doolan of the two boys; but Tim 
denied that he had been doing anything to 
Cesare, and Tooralladdy refused to say any- 
thing; so Mrs. Doolan, with a sweeping con- 


CESARE SHOWS HIS TEETH 


77 


demnation of boys in general went back to 
her washing, and Cillie and Tooralladdy went 
down to the basement to visit the pigs. 





CHAPTER VII 


murder! 


“ Oh, we’re marching along to old Quebec, 

And the drums are loudly beating; 

We’ll open the ranks and take another in. 

While the British are retreating ! ’ ’ 

HUS the children sang in the dusk of the 



JL May evening, and the shrill young voices 
rose and fell joyously on the balmy air. Here 
and there, if one were passing, he might hear a 
man or a woman joining in the song or croon- 
ing the melody; and if one could have looked 
through their eyes into their brains, as one 
looks through a window, there doubtless would 
have been seen a vision of childhood conjured 
up by the old refrain, for many of these men 
and women had been boys and girls of this 
very neighborhood, this identical old street; 
and the old games revived perennially, as did 
the flags, phloxes, sweet-williams, johnny-jump- 
ups, and other old-fashioned and sweet-smelling 
flowers in the dooryards. 

One time — oh, that was such a lark for all 
the children — when young Tom Lawrence and 


80 


MURDER ! 


his wife, who had been Effie Little, were home 
on a visit from the East, where they lived since 
their marriage, they had left the wide porch 
where were assembled Lawrences, Littles, and 
other relatives of varying degrees, not to 
mention friends and neighbors, who had come 
to welcome them, and had joined the great 
ring of children in the street. 

“Here, you youngsters,’’ called young Tom, 
as he ran down the walk with his young wife, 
holding her hand, “let us in that ring! ’Tisn’t 
so very long since we belonged there, anyhow, 
and all of you were in long clothes, too little 
to toddle.” 

And with a shout of welcome from the 
youngsters Tom and Effie were children again 
and went through the whole gamut of games 
they had played and sung as children, until 
there was no game left to play and everyone was 
thoroughly tired out, but entirely happy; and 
old Tom Lawrence, young Tom’s father, up 
on the porch, said it wouldn’t take so very 
much coaxing to make him take a hand in the 
games himself, because he wasn’t so old, 
either, and if mother only said the word — 

But mother did not. She was stout and had 
asthma; and besides — more’s the pity! — she 
had long since forgotten how to be young. 


MURDER ! 


81 


Some people do, you know; and some, more 
fortunate, never entirely forget it, and they 
enjoy life so much the more. 

No such upsetting of the usual order of 
things marked the evening in question, when 
Miss Marget Ann’s sweet voice proclaimed 
that she, too, was “maachin’ ” and that the 
“Bruttish” were “retreatin’ In contrast to 
her clear tones rang out a strident falsetto, 
much more earnest than musical. 

“Who’s the new frog in the mill pond,” in- 
quired Senator Darbison, as he and his wife 
sat on their balcony, exchanging now and then 
a word with a passing neighbor and chatting 
in a desultory fashion about the occurrences, 
public and private, of the day. 

“I think it must be Edward Tracy,” replied 
Mrs. Darbison, who pointedly refrained from 
using the nickname, Tooralladdy, that every 
one else had so readily adopted. She said it 
was unkind and unchristian to allow such a 
name to cling to any boy; and though the 
victim of it only grinned when he heard her 
say so, it was noticeable that when she ad- 
dressed him as Edward he responded with a 
beaming countenance that showed his appre- 
ciation of the difference. But her husband 
said he thought Tooralladdy was rather dis- 


82 


murder! 


tinctive and unusual; so he and the children 
continued to call the boy the name by which 
they had first known him. 

“I think it must be Edward Tracy,” she 
said. ‘T have noticed the new voice only 
within the last couple of weeks; since he came 
to Mrs. Doolan’s in fact.” 

“The poor lad can’t sing as well as he can 
‘say his joggerfy,’ can he ?” 

That was Tooralladdy’s principal accom- 
plishment, his geography, and he was prone to 
parade it. 

“I don’t suppose he has ever played children s 
games,” the man continued, “or sung children’s 
songs until he came into this agglomeration.” 

“Oh, yes, he has; at least, he has sung the 
hymns and songs they sing at school, so Father 
Bacon tells me. He says Edward has a very 
receptive mind and a fine, sturdy character; 
that there is the making of a fine man in him 
if only some one will take an interest in him 
and lend him a helping hand. Now, what are 
you smiling at ?” 

The light from Wolfe’s lamp-post shone full 
on the senator’s face, and he could not have 
hidden, even had he tried, his amusement from 
his wife. 

“At you and Father Bacon and your plans,” 


MURDER ! 


83 


he answered, “which I am to be permitted to 
carry out; for of course you stood sponsor 
for my acquiescence. How many does this 
make ? Thirty-seven 

“Nonsense! There were only four others, 
and you know they did you credit at St. Igna- 
tius’s.” 

“Especially Duprcz, who is now at Sing 
Sing, and Burke, who ought to be, if what 
people say of him is true.” 

“I said, ‘at St. Ignatius’s’. They did do you 
credit there. What they became afterward 
was not the fault of the college nor of their 
education.” 

“ Nor mine, I hope, ” he quizzed. 

“Of course not!” was the somewhat indig- 
nant response. “And besides, you seem to 
forget Amann, w^ho is to be ordained next year, 
and Thompson, who would have amounted 
to something above the ordinary, I’m sure, 
had he lived and grown strong. ” 

“ Yes, I think he would, poor fellow. And 
so you and Father Bacon have put your heads 
together and decided that Tooralladdy is to be 
the next protege, eh?” 

“ Well, aren’t you interested in the boy, and 
aren’t you always doing something for some- 
body ? And why not Edward as well as another ? 


84 murder! 

You haven’t any one else in view, have you ?” 

She knew he had not, as she knew all the 
ins and outs of his busy life and generous heart ; 
but it suited her whim sometimes to invite 
further confidences by assuming that there was 
more to be told. 

“Is it necessary that there should always be 
a sort of Darbison scholarship at the college, 
keeping a place warm for Dillie until he is old 
enough to fill it himself 

“Not necessary, of course; but, for my part, 
I am proud to remember that in all the seventy- 
odd years since the college was founded there 
has been a Darbison there, or some one to 
represent the name. And you know you are, 
yourself. Come, now, John, confess that you 
are as keen about the matter as I am, and have 
not the least intention of letting the custom 
lapse. If James Ling goes to the University 
in the autumn, as he hopes to do, there will be 
an opening at the college for Edward and — ” 
“ And he won’t be fitted to fill it, ” interrupted 
the senator. 

“ Oh, yes , he will, with a little coaching. 
Father Bacon says.” 

“And who’s to coach him?” 

“Father Bacon and — ” 

“And you?” 


murder! 


85 


“The idea! No; you.” 

The big man threw back his head and 
laughed long and loudly. 

“It’s out at last,” he said finally. “I knew 
I was to be the victim if you and Father Bacon 
got your heads together. So I’m to pay the 
piper and also teach him the tunes, am I ? But, 
seriously, we know little of the boy except that 
he comes of bad stock; and perhaps he has no 
more desire for a good education or anything 
better than what he is or knows at present 
than ” 

“Ah, you don’t know, but I do! I’ve really 
been making his acquaintance, and I’ve dis- 
cussed him fully with Father Bacon; and you’ll 
allow that he ought to know the boy, and he 
does. It was because he saw so much that is 
good in Edward that he persuaded his uncle 
to give him up; for that’s what it amounts to, 
his being with Mrs. Doolan. And that. Father 
Bacon says, was only preliminary to something 
better, when opportunity should offer. And 
now here it is.” 

“Here what is.?” 

“ The opportunity. ” 

“ Where ? I must confess I don’t see it. ” 

“Why, James Ling’s scholarship. Doesn’t 
that make an opening for Edward ?” 


86 


MURDER ! 


“A woman’s reasoning, truly! Because one 
boy gives up a sort of benefice to accept some- 
thing better, another must immediately be found 
to fill the shoes he steps out of. It isn’t so 
much that a boy must be helped as that a 
vacancy must be filled. ” 

“Now you think you’re teasing me, so I 

know my case is won. In the morning ” 

“Not so fast, my Lady Bountiful! The 
boy himself may like to have a word to say in the 
matter. And by the way, what do you and 
Father Bacon purpose to make of liim.^ An- 
other priest ? A professional man ? A globe- 
trotter ? That last is what his ‘ joggerfy ’ would 
indicate. ” 

Before Mrs. Darbison could answer there 
was a sudden break in the new game that the 
merry children had taken up. 

“What shall we dress her in. 

Dress her in, dress her in? 

WTiat shall we dress her in? 

Shall it be black?” 

So they had been singing at the top of their 
happy voices ; but now the song wavered, broke, 
died away and was drowned in a wave of tumult 
that rose and swelled at the far corner of the street 
where the crowd of young boys nightly assem- 
bled on Gallio’s cellar door. There were loud, 


murdee! 


87 


angry and blasphemous words; then a jumble 
of voices, male and female; the sound of 
barrels suddenly overturned and rolhng about, 
the rush of flying feet and a shrill scream of 
agony. And then down the street came a 
frantic man, running for his life; and the 
children’s ring parted and broke as Cesare 
dashed through it and made for the Welsh 
Yard, the frightened children scurrying out of 
his way like hares and pheasants when the 
gunner invades the creatures’ preserves in the 
wood. 

“Cesare!” 

Senator Darbison shouted sternly at the 
fleeing figure and laid his hand on the balcony 
rail preparatory to leaping over on to the pave- 
ment; but his wife seized his arm and forcibly 
held him back. 

“What are you going to do?” she asked. 
“Don’t you see that the man has a knife and 
that he is frantic and desperate?” 

The tumult of the street rose and rolled 
onward in the wake of the fugitive. At Gallio’s 
corner the harsh, cracked voice of an old woman 
wailed in tears, lamenting her oldest son; and 
a man’s deeper tones, her husband’s, crying 
that his sin had found him out, poured forth 
maledictions and curses on the evil one whom 


88 


MURDER ! 


he had sheltered and harbored, and who now 
repaid his kindness with murder. 

Yes, murder it was; and boyish voices took 
up the word, shouted it, yelled it, and added 
to the horrid cry of “Murder!” high-pitched 
and almost inaidiculate yells that quickly re- 
solved themselves into “Stop him!” “Police!” 
“Look out! he’ll cut you ! ” “ Cesare ! Cesare!” 
“ Don’t let him get away!” and a score of others. 
The children shrieked and some of them burst 
into sobs and cries, while all of them fled house- 
ward, if not homeward. 

Dillie and Gillie, the flrst thought of each 
being for the other, clasped hands and ran 
fleetly home, not waiting to mount the steps, 
but swiftly clambering over the balcony rail to 
cling to their mother, Dillie hiding his eyes in 
her dress; but Gillie’s gaze followed the form 
now scarcely perceptible in the dusk, now 
disappearing through the gate that led to the 
Welsh Yard. Then she spoke, clutching her 
father’s arm and pointing half-way down the 
dim vista of the street. 

“Tooralladdy!” 

Out from a basement areaway, where he had 
taken refuge in the first flurry of excitement, 
and whence he had been peering through the 
railings at Gesare as he approached, passed 


MURDER ! 


89 


and disappeared, now darted Tooralladdy. 
He was barefoot and without his jacket — and 
this much of his apparel he reclaimed later from 
the depths of the dark areaway where he 
dropped it when he made ready to follow Ce- 
sare; much later, in fact, when midnight had 
laid its peaceful spell on the erstwhile tumultu- 
ous neighborhood. The boy ran swiftly down 
the darkening street, one tattered shirt sleeve 
fluttering behind him, peered this way and that 
through the open gate at the end, then slipped 
through and was lost to the view of those four 
who were watching him from the balcony. 







CHAPTER VIII 


tooralladdy’s detective work 

T he spell of horror which had fallen on all 
the street when the cry of “Murder !” cut the 
air was quickly broken up into ungovernable 
excitement, noise, and rush. Down the street 
came a rabble of boys and men; boys of the 
neighborhood who were wont to loaf, of late, 
around Gallio’s corner, and men attracted to 
the corner from adjacent thoroughfares by the 
unusual clamor and uproar. They jostled one 
another as they ran, no one, it seemed, desiring 
to come too close upon the heels of the desperate 
man they were pursuing. Indeed, he had the 
start of them by a good block, for it took some 
seconds for them to recover from their excite- 
ment sufficiently to give chase; and Tooral- 
laddy, who was clqsest behind him, was perhaps 
two hundred feet away from Cesare as he passed 
through the Welsh Yard gate. 

“What is it? Who is it?” called Senator 
Darbison, as the crowd surged by; and a man, 
detaching himself from the press, mounted the 
91 


92 tooralladdy’s detective work 

stone coping of the balcony and kept his footing 
on the narrow outside ledge by holding on to 
the rail while he detailed the news. 

“ It’s murder, Senator, and the furriner ought 
to swing for it ! I was in the store when it hap- 
pened, and it was Cesare’s fault, not Luigi’s. 
Yes, it’s Luigi that’s murdered. He was carry- 
ing a big freezer of ice cream up from the cellar 
and Cesare jammed into him and almost threw 
him down the cellarway. ‘Get out o’ the way, 
you whelp!’ says Luigi — he orter ’a’ kicked 
him out — an’ with that Cesare calls him a — 
(he checked himself suddenly out of deference 
to the woman and children at his elbow) — a 
name, and Luigi dropped the freezer and struck 
at him. Then Cesare jerks a knife out of his 
shirt bosom an’ made a slash at Luigi an’ cut 
his shoulder. God! He looked like a tiger, he 
was that savage ! Luigi backed away from him 
as soon as he seen the knife and looked around 
for something to defend himself with, but the’ 
wasn’t nothin’ handy. Then he turned and run 
out the back door, Cesare after him, and some 
of us^ fellows after him\ but before we could 
reach them he jumped on Luigi an’ he turned 
around to grapple with him an’ Cesare druv 
the knife in Luigi’s throat. It must ’a’ killed 
him right away, ’cause Luigi fell down on the 


tooralladdy’s detective work 93 

pavement an’ never stirred; an’ Cesare gave 
him one look and then run like a deer. ’Fore 
any of us fellers could draw breath he was gone. 
An’ now look at the gang that’s after him! 
They’ll never get him, though; he’s got too 
good a start.” 

“Is there a policemen in the lot?” inquired 
the senator, “or any man strong enough or 
daring enough to overpower the ruffian if they 
catch up with him?” 

“Not a one,” responded the informer; “but 
Patsy Brazil an’ his pardner was goin’ down 
the street, an’ as soon as they heard some one 
yell ‘Murder!’ and saw Cesare run down this 
way, they knowed he was makin’ for the river 
an’ they ran down Broad street to head him 
off.” 

“Good!” ejaculated Darbison. “If Brazil 
gets down to the levee before Cesare does, 
Cesare’s goose is cooked.” For he knew Brazil, 
the policeman, to be a man of power along the 
levee, where he was held in awe by the unruly 
element, both white and black, that lived there; 
and he was sure they would help him to hold or 
to ferret out any one not of their clique who was 
fleeing from justice through their territory and 
across the river into another state. 

When the crowd reached the Welsh Yard it 


94 tooralladdy’s detective work 

paused. Some of the men passed through; 
some turned and retraced their steps, not car- 
ing to risk the chance of Cesare’s leaping out 
on them from ambush with his wicked knife. 
The dwellers of the street were to be found in 
both parties; but many of them, too, were still 
in their own or in their neighbors’ dooryards, 
gasping out question and answer in regard to 
the sudden and awful catastrophe that had 
befallen their peaceful quarter. At Gallio’s cor- 
lier the mother of the dead youth wept loudly 
and without comfort; and her remaining son 
and daughters, scarcely less moved, vainly en- 
deavored to quiet her. The store was deserted; 
the father sat alone in the ice-cream parlor, 
a stricken man who, from that night, aged per- 
ceptibly, and within a year, was, at middle age, 
a decrepit and tottering wreck of his former self. 

The body of the poor murdered youth was 
at length carried within doors and the terrible 
wound through which his life had gone forth 
ceased to crimson the pave; but on the spot 
where he had fallen there was, for years after, 
replacing the bricks, a small stone slab on which 
was deeply engraved a cross. This in accord- 
ance mth the foreign custom which always 
marks the scene of a violent death with the 
symbol of man’s redemption. 


tooralladdy’s detective work 95 

The kindly women of the neighborhood went 
at once to minister to the aifflicted household, 
first among them being Mrs. Giffen, Dave’s 
mother, whose recent bereavement made her 
heart especially tender toward this sorrowing 
mother. And ere long Father Bacon came, too. 

‘‘Bless his sahft heart!” said Mrs. Doolan, 
“he always knows whin an’ where there’s 
sorrah to be comforted, an’ there you’ll find him 
wid the kind wurd ready.” 

To liim the sympathizing women gave place, 
many of them knowing by experience that his 
wise and kindly counsel was indeed a balm of 
Gilead. 

And what of Tooralladdy? 

When Cesare, with his gleaming knife, had 
vanished through the Welsh Yard gate, and the 
boy had swiftly and silently followed him, run- 
ning, catlike, in his bare feet, Tooralladdy, 
peering through the same opening, had looked 
to the right and then to the left, expecting to see 
a skulking figure among the sheds; and not 
seeing him, he was temporarily nonplussed. 
Then his keen eye, looking straight ahead, 
caught sight of the fleeing man laboring down 
the slope of sticky clay, heavy from recent rains, 
as he made what haste he could directly to 
Drain street on his way to the river. At once 


96 tooralladdy’s detective work 

Tooralladdy saw Cesare’s false move; he had 
thought that the shortest route to the river, to a 
skiff, to escape; but the boy, better acquainted 
with the locality, knew that the man 
would find himself in a pocket, and have to 
double back to find an outlet to the safety he 
sought, thus losing time. Tooralladdy thought 
rapidly, then he dashed through the Dutch 
Yard and so out on to the street on which the 
German tenement fronted, then turned again to 
his left, toward Drain street. At the corner 
there was a saloon of unsavory repute, and from 
within he heard the rollicking voices of men. 
He stopped and peered cautiously around the 
corner of the house, up Drain street, and saw 
Cesare about half a block distant, still laboring 
through mire, still clutching his knife; and of 
pursuers there was not one to be seen. 

Tooralladdy knew not what to do. He 
looked about him for inspiration. There was 
no one in sight but women and children, and 
they were worse than useless, for he knew that 
Cesare would cut at them ruthlessly if they 
impeded his flight even unintentionally. At 
his wits’ ends, he was on the point of doubling 
on his own course to escape Cesare’s vengeance, 
who, he knew, would not spare him, when he 
heard a loud guffaw from the saloon against 


tooralladdy’s detective work 97 

which he leaned, panting from his long run. 
In a flash he had dashed open the swinging 
green baize doors and stood among the carous- 
ing men at the bar. 

‘‘Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan!” he gasped. 
“Come out — quick! You kin ketch him!” 
And seizing the man by the wrist, he dragged 
him toward the door. 

“ Tooralladdy ! What ails ye, me lad.^” 
said Big Dan Tracy, dropping his glass with a 
crash and allowing the boy to hurry him from 
the bar. The other men turned at the interrup- 
tion, and their loud laughter and ribald jokes 
were silenced. 

“ It’s Cesare,” answered Tooralladdy. “ He’s 
cut somebody — they yelled ‘Murder!’ — he’s 
coming down Drain street — he’s got a knife — 
be careful. Uncle Dan! — but ketch him — ^you 
kin hold him — ” and peering again around the 
corner of the house, he drew back quickly and 
made a sign that the fugitive was close at hand. 

Big Dan Tracy stepped within the recess of 
the door and flattened himself against the jamb, 
drawing his young nephew back with him and 
motioning to the men inside, whom he could see 
over the top of the screen, not to come out. 
Almost at that instant Cesare ran swiftly past 
the side of the house, crossed the pavement and 


98 tooralladdy’s detective work 

was darting across the street when Tracy sprang 
from the doorway almost on his back and threw 
his great arms about his shoulders, momentarily 
taking the murderer by surprise. But Cesare 
was slight and agile and squirmed like a cat 
in the other’s big embrace, striving to use his 
knife. His elbows were pinioned; but as his 
supple wrist slashed back at his captor, Tooral- 
laddy, darting out from the haven where his 
brawny uncle had placed him, stooped and 
caught at Cesare’s ankles, and the lithe Italian 
went down in the gutter, with Tracy on top • 
of him clutching his knife hand. 

On the instant, half a dozen men came to 
Tracy’s assistance, and the murderer was dis- 
armed and disabled; after which they picked 
him up, quite limp, and were about to tie his 
hands, when the tardy hue and cry came down 
Drain street. The crowd might have done him 
bodily harm ; but at that moment Patsy Brazil 
and his partner, running from Broad street, took 
charge of the prisoner, speedily handcuffed him 
and hustled him away to the police station, 
followed by a motley crowd of men, women, 
and children from the slums, who had gathered 
at the cry of death as vultures scent a carcass 
from afar. 

Tooralladdy stood in the midst of the crowd 


tooralladdy’s detective work 99 

that remained, with blood trickling down his 
forearm from a side swipe of Cesare’s knife. 

“You’re hurted, me lad; sure, he’s cut ye!” 
said Tracy, anxiously. 

“It’s nawthin’; on’y a scratch,” answered the 
boy, and shook the blood from his fingers while 
Big Dan Tracy, with his rough hand gently 
laid on the boy’s shoulder, told and retold how 
cleverly the lad had traced and trapped the 
fugitive, making light of his own share in the 
capture; and the crowd of men and boys who 
had joined in the pursuit at a safe distance, now 
augmented by many others attracted by the 
excitement, related the story of Luigi Gallio’s 
murder and Cesare’s flight. 

Hours later, after Tooralladdy’s slight wound 
had been dressed and he himself stowed away, 
a hero, in his humble quarters. Gillie Darbison 
had a funny thought as she lay awake in her little 
room, and she laughed softly in the darkness. 

“Why are you laughing ?” asked Dillie,from 
his room across the hall. “ Why don’t you go to 
sleep ? I shouldn’t think anybody could laugh 
after tonight.” 

“ Oh, you’d be shocked if I told you,” answered 
the little girl; so she did not tell until many 
months later, when Tooralladdy’s fortunes had 
taken a decided turn for the better. 


LOFC. 





I 











CHAPTER IX 


THE “mother school’s” NEW PUPIL 



PEAR-TREE, no matter how large and 


roomy, no matter how crochety its limbs 
and adaptable as seats, no matter how hard its 
young fruit and formidable as missiles of defense 
— a pear-tree, you will acknowledge, is not the 
best place in the world for a family quarrel. The 
aggressor — and the aggressor’s name was al- 
ways Cillie, as the defender’s was sure to be 
Dillie — might be spry and supple and fearlessly 
tantalizing; but chasing and teasing a victim in 
a pear-tree is not as easy of accomplishment as 
is the same process on a lawn, or in a stable, or 
even through the house, where one can flee up 
the front stairs and down the back, or dodge 
from kitchen to pantry, from porch to cellar- 
way, from attic to gable roof. 

Dillie had found that out long ago; and he 
had also discovered that the aggressor was 
quite his equal in daring, strength, and agility, 
and his superior in attaining the end in view; 
that is, she always succeeded in getting the 


101 


102 


THE “mother school’s” 

prize or the information which he possessed and 
on which she had set her heart. When Cillie 
said, “I’ll follow you and tease you until you 
give in,” Dillie knew that his work was cut out 
for him; and as a last resource he took to the 
pear-tree, where, by skilful manoeuvering, he 
could keep out of her reach, and when he had 
led her as high as the branches would support 
their weight, he could again escape by dropping 
from branch to branch. In that, Cillie was 
obliged to confess a handicap, for she had tried 
it one day and found to her cost that skirts are 
not trousers; that they catch on knotty limbs 
and hold the wearer suspended, and that gath- 
ers rip and hems tear when put to the test, and 
that a ‘boy girl’ sometimes has to pay for her 
fun by spending a whole afternoon mending 
what a patient and long-suffering mother at 
length refuses either to repair or to counte- 
nance as part of her daughter’s wardrobe. 

It was a warm morning in June. School was 
“out” for all the children who went to a real 
school; but the “mother school” that the 
Darbisons attended seldom had a long vacation. 
If the weather was particularly oppressive, 
perhaps school “took in” at seven instead of at 
nine, and “let out” after a short session. But 
scarcely a day passed that had not its task in 


NEW PUPIL 


103 


the class-room; and the day that was so marked 
was neither the shortest nor the happiest day, 
as the children and their mother all had had 
occasion to remark. In fact, a do-less day was 
a sorry day. 

It was undoubtedly too warm for comfort 
on this particular June day — decidedly too 
warm for violent exercise; and yet Dillie 
dashed out of the house at full speed and made 
a flying jump for the lower limbs of the pear- 
tree, with Cillie in hot pursuit. He missed the 
limb and barely had time to circle the tree 
and make for the open stable door before 
Cillie was again at his heels. Up the ladder 
he flew, into the hay-loft, and then gave the 
ladder a kick that dislodged it; and by the 
time Cillie had it again in place he was out of 
the loft window and comparatively safe in the 
pear-tree. 

Cillie descended from the loft and went rue- 
fully out on the lawn. 

“You’re the meanest, hatefullest, cantank- 
erestest boy!” she cried, gazing up at him as 
she clicked her teeth together and tried to look 
as vicious as a pretty, and, on the whole, a 
nice little girl can look. “If I knew something 
you wanted to know, you know I’d tell you 
it.” 


104 THE “mother school’s’’ 

Dillie laughed and came down a bough or two 
when he saw she had no intention of following 
him. 

“I’ll bet you would! When you know some- 
thing, you’re bound to tell it; girls always do. 
Papa doesn’t tell you things he doesn’t want 
told.” 

“He does, too,” snapped Cillie, asserting 
herself because she felt that Dillie was right; 
and then she added in a wheedling tone, 
“I think you might tell me.” 

“Maybe I will when it happens,” he replied, 
teasingly. 

“And when will that be?” 

“Oh, about eight o’clock, I guess. 

“To you or to me?” 

“To both and neither of us.” 

“Now, Dillie, how can you be so stupid ? 
You know that can’t be so.” 

“Just wait and see. Miss.” 

“Oh, wait till I catch you! Won’t I tickle 
you for this !” 

“No, you won’t. You’ll be so tickled your- 
self you won’t think about anything else.” 

“Do you like it ?” 

“Don’t I ! It’s the jolliest thing !” 

“We’re going to Rilea’s Pond,” guessed 
Cillie. 


NEW PUPIL 


105 


“Not today,” chanted Dillie in sing-song, 
“nor any other day, that I know of.” 

“Uncle Francis is coming,” she ventured 
again. 

“Gee! I wish he was!” exclaimed Dillie 
in a tone that carried conviction, but not a 
solution of Cillie’s problem. 

“We’re not going to have any school today,” 
she suggested. 

“Oh, ain’t we .P” jeered Dillie, and the idea 
seemed to strike him as being particularly 
funny. “No school today! Just think of that!” 
he said, shutting one eye and addressing a 
robin on the lawn that was regarding him in 
the same quizzical manner. And then he went 
off into fits of laughter. 

Gillie was about to begin again her alternate 
pleadings and scoldings, but interrupted her- 
self when she heard the iron gate shut with a 
clang and footsteps come along the flagged 
walk that led across the lawn. Curiosity 
prompted her to run around the corner of the 
house to see who was coming in, but at that 
moment Dillie, with a “Hi there! Wait a 
minute!” began to descend from the pear-tree 
and she saw her opportunity of catching him 
at last. While she hesitated about what to do, 
the newcomer appeared, and it was Tooral- 


106 THE “mother school’s” 

laddy. Cillie was surprised to see him, as she 
knew he had been there an hour or two earlier 
on his every-morning errand which vitally 
concerned the pigs; more surprised when she 
noticed that he was carrying books and a slate; 
and most surprised of all when she realized 
that what surprised her did not seem to have 
the same effect on Dillie, at whom she had 
glanced to see what he thought of the evidence 
in the case. 

“You’re early,” Dillie remarked. 

“He said to come about half past seven,” 
replied Tooralladdy. 

“Who said?” asked Cillie. 

“Yer father,” answered the boy. 

“Cat’s out!” cried Dillie, and grinned ex- 
pansively at his sister; but she looked from 
one to the other without understanding. 

At that moment, while the three stood in a 
triangular group unusually silent, Mrs. Dar- 
bison appeared at the end of the porch. 

“Class-time!” she called. “Oh, are you 
there, Edward? I didn’t hear you come in 
and was afraid you were going to start in as a 
tardy scholar. Dillie will show you where to 
wash your hands before you come upstairs.” 

“They’re clean, ma’am,” said Tooralladdy, 
showing a pair of rough and warty but clean 


NEW PUPIL 


107 


hands. “And me shoes, too,” he added proudly. 

By this time Cillie had recovered her wits and 
her breath and she ran to her mother. 

“Is Tooralladdy coming to our school, 
mama.?” she asked. 

“Edward Tracy is,” was the smiling reply of 
the mother. 

“W'hy .?” queried the little girl. 

“So he’ll be ready for St. Ignatius’s in the 
fall. Don’t you like him to come .?” 

“ Oh, yes ! It’s jolly ! But why didn’t you tell 
us about it before ? ” 

“Dillie knew it,” said her mother, gently 
and evasively. 

“And you didn’t tell me because you thought 
I’d blab it, and it’s nobody’s affair but ours ?” 

“Blab isn’t a pretty word, dear,” answered 
Mrs. Darbison; but as there was no denial of 
her suspicion, Cillie felt rebuked. 

“I’m sorry I’m such a tattletale, mama,” she 
said. “I won’t tell a single soul, I promise 
you.” 

“Oh, you may tell whom you please, now. 
It’s no longer a secret, now that everything 
is arranged. That is, you needn’t speak of Ed- 
ward’s going to St. Ignatius’s, but every one 
will know soon that he is coming here for his 
daily lessons.” 


108 THE “mother school’s” 

“Yes, mama.” Then, turning to Dillie, 
Cillie asked suddenly, “Is that what you 
knew ?” 

“Yes, it is, Miss Curiosity!” 

“Oh, I’ll fix you now for teasing me! Hold 
him for me, Tooralladdy !” 

Dillie made another dash for the stable door, 
intending to pursue the same tactics that had 
served him so well in the first pursuit, but he 
had Tooralladdy to reckon with now, as well 
as Cillie, and he was not as fortunate as before. 
Tooralladdy’s long arms and legs gave him 
the advantage, and so Dillie was caught by the 
leg when half way up to the loft and to freedom 
and he was rather more than persuaded to come 
down and take his punishment. Tooralladdy 
held him while Cillie pretended to pound him 
unmercifully and tickled him not a little; but 
as there was a great deal of laughter and play 
over the performance, it is not likely that Cillie 
was much in earnest, or Dillie much hurt, or 
Tooralladdy much scandalized. The tinkling 
of the dining-room bell warned them that it 
was time for lessons, and the three children 
hastened into the house, Tooralladdy stopping 
at the pear-tree to pick up his books and slate, 
which he had dropped there when Cillie bade 
him hold her teasing brother; and as they 


NEW PUPIL 


109 


mounted the stairs to the school-room, on the 
third floor, Dillie remarked, in the favorite 
catch phrase of the last few weeks : 

“O’ny fer TooraUaddy, I wudn’t be 
kotched that time.” 








CHAPTER X 


tooralladdy’s education 

I T must be confessed that the first few days 
that Tooralladdy spent in the “mother 
school,” as the Darbison children called their 
class-room, were not replete with benefit to 
his education; it was all too funny, from his 
school-boy point of view, and too unlike his 
previous experiences of school-rooms, school 
life and school-teachers. 

In the first place, the room itself was deci- 
dedly pleasant and inviting; and that was con- 
trary to the impressions that Tooralladdy had 
carried away from all the school-rooms he had 
ever frequented, for they had been bare, gaunt, 
stuffy always, and sometimes squalid and dirty. 

This school-room was in the gable at the 
back of the house; high and peaked in the 
middle, the boarded ceiling sloped toward the 
side walls, which it met at a height of about six 
feet, so that in all parts of the room a person 
of ordinary size could stand upright. In the 
gable end was a high, triple window overlook- 
111 


112 tooralladdy’s education 

ing the stable roof, some twenty feet distant; 
and each of the side walls was pierced by two 
broad, low windows with wide sills; those on 
the west giving a glimpse of neighboring roofs 
and chimneys, while the eastern outlook was 
a mass of green that rose from the lawn and 
garden belonging to the house. Some fine 
trees lifted their branches even above the level 
of these windows, and the trunks of two that 
had been struck by lightning bore up a great 
mass of flowering trumpet vines. Each of these 
windows had its own constant and varying 
delight to offer to eyes weary of type, for each 
held a deep, wide window box filled with grow- 
ing plants. In the eastern windows vines ran 
up to the edge of the roof and shaded the room 
from the morning sun; such a riot of blue and 
white and pink and crimson and purple and 
rose-colored morning glories as was seen no- 
where else in so much loveliness and profusion 
the children thought; but perhaps that was 
because the beautiful bells swung between 
them and the sun and were painted in more 
than golden light, almost in fire. Eock moss 
and jewel weed and johnny-jump-up and 
verbena and other bright flowers bloomed 
daily, to wave in the breeze and be dashed by 
the rain; and though Dillie snipped off bios- 


tooralladdy’s education 113 

soms every morning for the vase on his mother’s 
table, they never seemed to number any less in 
their airy gardens. 

The walls of this school-room, too, were a 
revelation to Tooralladdy. There were plenty 
of pictures all about, unframed and unglazed, 
and fastened to the dark wood with bright 
brass thumb-tacks. Tooralladdy was fond of 
pictures, and his eager eyes studied these often 
when he should have been conning his lessons ; 
but hi^ new school-teacher never reproved him 
for inattention, for she knew that he was thus 
acquiring a part of his education. At intervals 
of several weeks, as Tooralladdy soon saw, the 
pictures were changed and a new set sub- 
stituted, all of them copies of old masters or of 
famous paintings or engravings; and Mrs. 
Darbison then explained to the children the 
significance of those that did not readily explain 
themselves, and spoke to them of the artist who 
had drawn or painted the originals, of their 
lives, of their countries, and of the eras during 
which they had lived. 

There were maps and charts on the walls, 
also, that Tooralladdy understood and appre- 
ciated more readily. Great maps that showed 
creeks as well as rivers, hills as well as moun- 
tains, little towns and large cities; and these, 


114 TOORALLADD'X’S EDUCATION 

too, were changed from time to time as the 
famous “joggerfy” lessons required. The 
botanical charts were a mystery to the boy for 
a long while, until he was given a practical 
demonstration in the science; and then, though 
he enjoyed the lesson, he could not help think- 
ing and saying that it was a pity to tear up a 
pretty flower just to see how it is made. For he 
could not grow accustomed to their profusion 
and was apprehensive lest the constant stripping 
of the blossoms for vases would leave the win- 
dow boxes and vines all bare. 

And the teacher! Oh! she was a delight! 
Sometimes Tooralladdy studied her instead 
of his surroundings, and he never suspected 
that she knew it, for she seemed so absorbed in 
other things. Looking at her, the boy tried to 
conjure up a vision of other teachers he had 
known — ^for he had been in many classes and 
at several schools. He would picture the stolid, 
round-faced Miss Magg, always yawning in 
the children’s faces and making them feel as 
dull and stupid as she was herself; the wiry 
Mrs. Irwin, with her corkscrew curls the color 
of dirty yellow smoke, who looked a typical 
old maid, such as one sees on “comic” valen- 
tines, and was, in fact, the virago mother of 
four cowed children; the sneering, leering 


tooralladdy's education 115 

Cregan with his cruel, sharp tongue, everlast- 
ingly banging his desk with his big ruler and 
assailing the boys with names that put mischief 
into their fertile brains. These and others did 
Tooralladdy pass in mental review for four or 
five minutes at a stretch, only to come back to a 
realization of a pretty, plump lady who darned 
stockings or mended clothes or flashed a bright 
needle in and out of gay wools when she was 
not hearing a recitation or leaning over a desk 
and patiently explaining away a “stump” in 
a particularly hard lesson. 

Cillie and Dillie had their lessons together, 
though Cillie sniffed over grammar, which she 
disliked intensely, and sometimes even wept 
at its difficulties, while Dillie learned and re- 
cited his with ease and pleasure. But then, when 
it came to arithmetic, Cillie’s pencil flew at her 
slate with quick jabs and dashes, while Dillie’s 
crawled and squeaked dolefully and had to be 
encouraged by his teacher to finish its task. 

In the midst of his first lesson in arithmetic, 
which was really a review so that his new 
teacher might gauge his knowledge of it, 
Tooralladdy was horrified to see Cillie jump 
up from her desk and seat herself on the south 
window sill, where she proceeded to dig about 
the flowers in the box with a little garden tool. 


116 tooralladdy’s education 

Such a breach of discipline was rank rebellion, 
he thought, and he looked apprehensively at 
Mrs. Darbison, wondering what effect anger 
and indignation would have on her placid 
countenance. To his surprise, she paid no heed 
whatever to Cillie, but went on with the work 
she had in hand; and when the clock struck 
the half hour and Cillie returned to her seat, 
Tooralladdy had the faintest glimmering of an 
idea of the system on which the classes were 
conducted — that whoever had finished an 
allotted task was at liberty to use the rest 
of that half hour as he or she pleased, pro- 
vided no one else was disturbed. 

When Dillie picked up a book, or swung a 
pair of light dumb-bells, or stood idly gazing 
out of the window with his hands in his trousers 
pockets; when Cillie tended the gardens, or ran 
a few lines of stitching in her busy mother’s 
patchwork, or followed Dillie’s example with the 
dumb-bells, or rummaged in a closet that seemed 
to hold all sorts of girls’ gear — at first Too- 
ralladdy gasped and waited for the blow to 
fall; but within a day or two he had fallen into 
the ways of this most pleasant “ mother school ” ; 
and one morning he astonished himself by 
getting up to study a chart that had excited his 
curiosity. He saw that it bore pictures of 


tooralladdy's education 117 

flowers and leaves and what he called their 
skeletons, and at the bottom he read a line which 
said something about botany. Now, he knew 
Botany Bay, from his beloved “joggerfy”; 
but what it had to do with, flowers, or flowers 
with it, he had no idea, and he was still too shy 
to inquire. Then he suddenly realized that 
he was taking the same liberty that had so 
amazed him in Cillie and Dillie, and he almost 
slunk into his seat, expecting a reprimand. 
None came, however; but instead there was an 
explanation of the chart, for Mrs. Darbison, who 
had been engaged with a recitation of Dillie’s, 
saw that it was a puzzle to him. So, in a short 
while, he felt as much at home in his new sur- 
roundings as though he had always known them ; 
making as free with all the school-room fur- 
nishings as the others did and feeling as welcome 
to them as though they were really his own. 

On that first day he ran hurriedly through a 
series of problems in arithmetic as far as per- 
centage and discount, and there his confidence 
left him and he began to flounder. So there he 
was told to stop, and from that point Mrs. 
Darbison’s teaching really began. It was the 
same with all the other studies. He was tested 
and allowed a free tether as far as his knowledge 
would permit him to go, and from that point 


118 tooralladdy’s education 

he was taken in hand by one whom he in- 
stinctively felt to be the wisest and kindliest 
teacher he had ever known; one for whom it 
would be a pleasure to undertake the mastery 
of any lesson, and who could make clear even 
the most obscure page of the catechism. 

At ten o’clock of the day that introduced 
Tooralladdy to this new regime, it was already 
oppressively warm and there was not a breath 
of air stirring, not even at the south window; 
so school was dismissed. While Cillie and Dillie 
put their books and slates into their desks and 
arranged their belongings in order, Tooralladdy 
carried his to the little table which was to be 
his during the summer, and piled them there in 
a heap. Meantime, Mrs. Darbison had gone 
to an old-fashioned chest of drawers that stood 
in a dark corner of the room, and from one of the 
small upper drawers with brilliant glass knobs 
she took a Japanese box divided into several 
compartments, each containing small cards 
of different colors. To Cillie she gave a red and 
a blue one, and to Dillie a red, a blue, and a 
green; and to Tooralladdy she explained that 
these were merit cards — red for lessons well 
recited, blue for good conduct, green for dili- 
gence; and that as soon as he had been ex- 
amined in the various branches of study and 


tooralladdy’s education 119 

set to regular tasks, he, too, would be given 
a daily record of merits and demerits, to stand 
to his bulletin at the end of the month. 

Cillie clattered down stairs with Tooralladdy 
and invited him to go with her to the stable 
loft, where she and Dillie housed a flock of 
pigeons, but he said he had promised Tim to 
help carry home some clothes as soon as school 
was out, and he must go at once. So Cillie 
went alone to visit the pigeons, and Dillie 
remained in the school-room to read, stretched 
out on the floor with his chin in his hands, his 
heels in the air, and his big book spread out in 
front of him. 

Tooralladdy’s education advanced along 
many lines during that summer. Besides what 
he learned from books, there were scores of other 
lessons that the boy took to heart and by which 
he profited — lessons of both precept and exam- 
ple. His rough and ready manner of speech 
quicldy softened under a few hints from Mrs. 
Darbison, who sometimes gave him a correct 
phrasing for his uncouth style, and sometimes 
invited him to apply a rule of grammar to some 
statement that was glaringly incorrect in form, 
though perhaps right as to facts. 

“Is that what grammar’s for?” he inquired 
with dawning understanding, when the lat- 


120 tooralladdy’s education 

ter method had been applied several times. 

“That is, indeed, what grammar is for,” 
replied Mrs. Darbison. “ What did you think 
it was for.^” 

“ That’s what it says, of course,” he answered, 
turning to one of the earliest lessons in etymol- 
ogy, “ but I never thought of it that way before. 
Why, I thought grammar was just — just some- 
thing to learn.” 

“ That’s what I’d like to think about sewing,” 
put in Cillie; “just something to learn without 
ever having to do it.” 

“Everything that we learn, Edward,” said 
Mrs. Darbison, shaking a reproving head at 
Cillie, “is to learn and to apply. And that, in 
itself, is an important lesson, don’t you see?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” answered the boy thought- 
fully, just realizing and taking in the truth of 
the statement; and he turned the leaves of his 
grammar meditatively, pausing here and there 
to read over some well-conned paragraph in the 
light of this new revelation. 

“That makes it all seem different, doesn’t 
it ?” he said presently, looking up with a bright 
smile; and his teacher secretly congratulated 
herself on the value of her inspiration and the 
aptness of her new pupil. 

Niceties of manner he soon picked up, and 


tooralladdy’s education 121 

personal nicety he had never had to learn; 
for though his face and hands and his bare 
feet had often, after his work or his play, been 
somewhat grimy, they were not so longer than 
it took to reach a hydrant or a tub of water; 
and as for his clothes, they were always as 
scrupulously neat and spruce as his scanty 
supply would permit, and to this scant store 
Mrs. Doolan added judiciously, as his small 
fund of money, accumulated by means of “odd 
jobs,” was placed in her hands. Within a few 
weeks of Tooralladdy’s entrance into this new 
and delightful school the three children took up a 
new study under a new teacher; and very im- 
portant they all felt when first they opened their 
Latin grammars and entered into this new 
realm under the tutelage of another but equally 
charming instructor. 

“Now that we are going to have a ‘father 
class’ in our nice little ‘mother school’,” said 
Cillie, by way of preface, “I think perhaps, 
before we get through, we may have a ‘ Tooral- 
laddy class’, too.” 

“A ‘Tooralladdy class’ in what.^^” queried 
practical Dillie. 

“Oh, in whistling, maybe; or in leap-frog.” 

These were two things in which Tooralladdy 
was very proficient, but in which Cillie had 


m 


tooralladdy’s education 


lately been forbidden to emulate him, though 
she was quite clever at either. 

“Then we’ll have a ‘Cillie class,’ too, for 
tomboys,” said Dillie. 

“And a ‘Dillie class’ for bookworms,” 
Cillie retorted, and was for going ahead with 
the friendly squabble, but that the striking of 
the clock was the signal for school to begin and, 
therefore, for silence. 

Twice a month the school-room had another 
visitor. Father Bacon, who held a catechism 
review and gave a detailed explanation of the 
daily lessons the children had recited since his 
previous visit; and they all agreed that he, 
though kind, was the severest taskmaster they 
had. 

“ I used to be awful scared of him, ” Tooral- 
laddy confided to Dillie, “but I’m not any 
more.” 

“Well, you’d better be if you don’t know 
your lesson or don’t pay attention to the in- 
struction,” Dillie replied, “’cause if he ever 
looks at you with that toothache look of his, 
you’ll wish you were in Jericho.” 

“I’ve seen him lam fellows good and hard 
at the school when they needed it, but he never 
looks that way when he lams them; he looks 
white and sorry. So I’m not afraid of that look.” 


tooralladdy’s education 


123 


“I wonder why he does it?” queried Cillie. 
“ He gets his face all twisted up till he gets me 
scared to death.” 

“ I think he wants to look cross and pretend 
he’s cross,” said Tooralladdy, “when he isn’t 
at all.” 

“ Well, it’s enough for me,” said Dillie. 

“ And me, too,” chimed Cillie, 


CHAPTER XI 


A SUBPCENA 

D uring the long, hot afternoons ot summer 
the street was deserted from curb to curb, 
where the cobble stones shone white after their 
early morning washing with a hose; for it was 
the neighborhood custom to sprinkle the yard, 
the garden (if they had one), the pavement, and 
the street while the sun was still far down in the 
eastern sky. In shady yards and on verandas, 
in area ways, and in passageways between some 
houses that stood close together, on side door- 
steps and on back porches girls and boys con- 
gregated, but seldom in mixed groups, for their 
occupations were very different. 

The girls, for the most part, devised doll 
clothes out of scraps of silk and wool; or they 
crocheted or constructed lamp mats on tiny 
home-made looms built of pins stuck into spools ; 
or they cut paper dolls and made them elabo- 
rate and elegant wardrobes from bits of bright 
tissue paper and tin foil. Sometimes they made 
what they called ice cream, each one furnishing 
125 


126 


A SUBPOENA 


part of the ingredients and bits of ice begged 
from the family ice-chest; and when the mix- 
ture was pronounced right as to taste, it was put 
in a tin bucket and that in a wooden one packed 
with the ice, and the tin was laboriously turned 
around and around by the girls, each one taking 
her turn. The few people who owned freezers 
— which were not so plentiful then as now — 
would have hesitated to lend so precious a pos- 
session to a party of girls; and on the whole, 
I am not sure that the makeshift freezer was 
not part of the fun. The contents, it was said 
by those who ate of them, were not half bad. 

The boys, scorning such feminine pursuits, 
assembled in their own particular haunts to 
play mumbledypeg or jacks or checkers or 
authors or jack-straws ; or perhaps they whittled 
odds and ends of boys’ gear — flutes that would 
not pipe, whistles that wheezed, wagons that 
wobbled on rickety wheels, furniture for their 
sisters’ doll houses that would fit neither the 
dolls nor the houses. What they liked best of 
all was to lie on the hay in the loft of a stable — 
and there were half a dozen to choose from — 
and drowse the afternoon away in oft-told tales 
gathered from books or other sources. Such a 
session was called the B. B. C., and part of its 
charm was that no girls were ever admitted. 


A SUBPCENA 


127 


nor were they told the significance of the cryptic 
initials, though they guessed everything from 
Boys’ Beneficial Congress to Boobies’ and 
Blockheads’ Club. Even that did not induce 
the boys to tell. 

With the coming on of evening, girls and 
boys sauntered homeward ; and before long the 
street began to be populous again with little 
girls in fresh-starched frocks and boys in stiff 
shirtwaists and well brushed trousers; all with 
shining, clean faces and hair newly slicked or 
curled. They sat sedately on the front porches 
or doorsteps, keeping clean, according to their 
mothers’ injunctions, until — well, until they 
forgot; but that was rarely until after supper. 
Presently these disappeared briefly by ones, 
twos and threes, as tinkling supper bells sounded 
through open doors; and when they emerged 
once more, it was time to think of the evening 
games that included the whole democracy of 
children, large and small, girls and boys. 

Late in August the days already begin to 
grow short, and at seven o’clock twilight falls 
and shortly merges into darkness. That is the 
best time of all for “Fox and Geese,” or “I 
Spy,” when fleeing forms vanish in the dusk 
and it is almost impossible to say whether that 
was Heavenly Gift with Miss Marget Ann’s 


128 


A SUBP NA 


apron over his head or Miss Marget Ann her- 
self; or whether Tooralladdy had changed caps 
with Dillie Darbison; or whether Eddie Barr 
had turned up the collar of his shirtwaist to 
make himself look like Sammie Speiser, who 
wore stand-up collars to protect his weak throat. 

“Hide and Seek” was the game, with the 
hue and cry racing down through the Welsh 
Yard and back by way of the alleys and over 
neighbors’ fences. Gillie and Amy Little were 
“It,” one keeping guard while the other went 
cautiously into dusky hiding-places; and they 
were prowling slowly up the street within ear- 
shot of Gallio’s store, when they saw two 
policemen come around the comer and accost 
the big boys who were lounging on the cellar 
door. 

“Where’s this felly they call Tooralladdy?” 
asked one; and the two little girls stood still in 
terror to listen while Harvey Grant answered. 

“ I guess he’s down there playing along with 
the rest of ’em. He usually does. What’s he 
been doing?” he ventured to ask. 

“Oh, nuthin’; but we’ve got a subpoena for 
him. Where does he live?” 

Gillie waited to hear no more, but seizing 
Amy by the skirt, dragged her along and flew 
toward home to tell her father what she had 


A SUBPCENA 


129 


heard; for she knew that a subpoena was a 
summons to court and meant serious business. 

Amy did not wait while Cillie recounted her 
news, but ran here and there, spreading the 
tidings among the playmates who had been 
caught and were “home,” and they, in turn, 
helped to give the alarm. 

“ Tooralladdy ” was everywhere in the air; 
and boys and girls, catching the infection, began 
to come from their hiding-places and to con- 
gregate in groups, whispering “ Tooralladdy, ” 
“ Tooralladdy, ” “ Tooralladdy. ” 

The whispers reached the boy’s ears as he 
crouched behind an ash barrel, and he came 
forth to meet a storm of warnings and admoni- 
tions. 

“Patsy Brazil’s after you!” 

“You’re goin’ to be arrested.” 

“I’d skoot, if I’s you.” 

“Say, sneak up through Wolfe’s alley and 
he’ll never get you.” 

“What you been doin’, Tooralladdy.^” 

“Here he comes! He’ll see you!” 

. But Tooralladdy heeded none of them. 
Crossing the street to avoid the officers who 
were coming in a leisurely manner, he ran 
straight to the Darbison house and clambered 
over the railing of the balcony, where Cillie 


130 


A SUBPCENA 


was telling her father and mother what she 
had overheard. 

“Oh, Tooralladdy,” she cried, “come right 
in here ! Papa won’t let them get you, will you, 
papa 

The officers now crossed the street, for they 
had seen the boy run, and approached the 
house. 

“ Good evenin’, sir; good evenin’, ma’am,” 
they said; and one continued, “We’re after 
that boy there, sir.” 

“What for?” 

“The Gallio case, sir.” 

“But you don’t want to take him with you 
now, surely!” 

“He’s a sharp one, sir; he might get away; 
and his testimony is necessary. We were 
instructed to find him and bring him in, more 
for safe keeping than anything else.” 

“Yes, I know his testimony is needed; I’ve 
told him he was likely to be summoned and he 
is willing to testify. I think you needn’t fear 
that he will run away; will you, my boy ?” 

“Not if you tell me to stay, sir,” answered 
Tooralladdy, “but I don’t want to go to jail.” 

“And you won’t. You have the paper, 
Carey ? Why didn’t you serve it earlier in the 
day?” 


A SUBPOENA 


131 


‘‘I was watching for him all day, sir, but 
couldn’t spy him. I thought he seen me an’ 
was givin’ me the slip.” 

“ I was driving for Tom Gorman from eleven 
o’clock until supper-time, and since then I’ve 
been playing,” said Tooralladdy. “I didn’t 
know you were looking for me.” 

“Well, we were told to bring him in, but if 
you’ll be answerable for him, Mr. Darbison — ” 

“ I will, ” was the reply. “ Give me the paper. 
The boy shall be on hand when he is wanted, I 
promise you.” 

“Very well, sir. I’m sorry to have disturbed 
you. Senator.” 

The officers turned away, but one of them 
came back to say: 

“ Tracy’s in the jail, sir. He’s been drinkin’ 
again, and we didn’t know what might come to 
him.” 

“That was a good move. But the boy’s all 
right. He’s not the same stamp as his uncle.” 

“Very well, sir. Good evenin’, sir.” 

And the officers departed, the younger chil- 
dren flying before them and following in their 
wake with awe. 

The crowd that had gathered dispersed with 
the departure of the policemen, and there was a 
half-hearted attempt to renew the interrupted 


132 


A SUBP NA 


game; but everyone seemed to have lost the 
spirit of it, and bed time was upon the neigh- 
borhood before the excitement had died out. 

And once more Tooralladdy retired to his 
modest quarters the hero of the hour. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE TRIAL 

W HEN the school term opened in Septem- 
ber at St. Ignatius’s College, Tooral- 
laddy was ready to enter the sixth grade; for he 
had made good use of his time and his oppor- 
tunities during the summer, and had given all 
three of his teachers much pleasure by his de- 
votion to his books and by his eagerness to 
learn. Therefore Cillie could not understand 
why, when other boys were flocking back to 
school and Dillie was wishing it were next year, 
when he would be a full-fledged collegian him- 
self, Tooralladdy should still continue to come 
to the “mother school, ’’and share their studies 
as he had been doing for the past few months ; 
but she was quite sure that the matter had been 
discussed at a certain conference which took 
place between Father Bacon and her father and 
mother and to which Tooralladdy had been 
summoned, but speedily dismissed. Cillie 
wanted very much to ask him something about 
it, but she remembered to curb her curiosity. 
133 


134 


THE TRIAL 


The fact of the matter was that Tooralladdy 
himself had asked for a postponement, and 
stated his reasons frankly to Senator Darbison 
one morning when he came for the pigs’ feed. 

“If I’ve got to testify in tliis Gallio case, Mr. 
Darbison,” he explained, setting down his buck- 
ets at the stable door and coming into the har- 
ness room where his friend and patron was 
inspecting a new saddle, “ I’d rather not start 
in at St. Ignatius’s until it’s over, because all 
those fellows at the college will be guying me 
about it and asking me questions. You told 
me I mustn’t talk about it any more’n I could 
help — ” When Tooralladdy was excited or very 
much in earnest he occasionally reverted to his 
former methods of speech. 

“The more you talk about it, my boy, the 
more the story grows ; and I want you to tell it 
as accurately as possible in court.” 

“Yes, sir, I know that — about the growing, 
I mean. I always meant to tell the truth about 
it; but sometimes, when I used to be telling it, 
all of a suddint — sudden, I mean — I’d find I 
was adding on something that somebody else 
had said or done, so I stopped. But those 
fellows’ll plague the life out o’ me, I’m fearin’.” 

“ That’s tiTie, Tooralladdy; there’s something 
in that; but it ought not to interfere with your 


THE TRIAL 


135 


education; and if you lose time now, at the 
beginning, it may cost you a full year’s work.” 

“ I’m sure I can make it up, sir, by studyin’ 
nights, and I’ll see can I get Father Bacon to 
mark off the lessons for me. Will he know 
them, sir, do you think?” 

‘‘Not a doubt of it,” said the man laughing. 

“I didn’t know, sir, him bein’ only in the 
parish school.” 

“And did you think he was put in the parish 
school because he was not as scholarly as the 
other priests? Let me tell you, Tooralladdy, 
there’s not a better scholar in the Order than 
that same Father Bacon.” 

“Yes, sir,” assented Tooralladdy, believing 
but not comprehending. 

“ I’ll ask him what he thinks of your plan,” 
continued the senator. 

“All right, sir. You know, I want to do , 
what you and him — I mean, he — says; but 
this was just somethin’ I was thinkin’ myself.” 

In view of the fact that the trial of Cesare 
Aretino for the murder of Luigi Gallio was on 
the docket for the fall term of court; and under 
the circumstances, considering that it might 
last several days, or perhaps even longer, and 
so interrupt his studies, Tooralladdy’s reluc- 
tance to enter upon a new phase of life among 


136 


THE TRIAL 


a new set of associates was allowed to have 
some weight; and so he continued his morning 
tasks in the school-room with Cillie and Dillie, 
and in the evening repaired to Father Bacon’s 
room in the college, where he was coached, as 
much as possible, in the lessons that the sixth 
grade had done that day. 

Late in October the Gallio case was called; 
and Cillie and Dillie looked with some awe 
upon their friend and companion as he stood 
by the dining-room fire one chilly morning, in 
his poor but well-kept Sunday suit, waiting for 
their father, with whom he was to go to court. 

“Gee whiz! I’m glad I’m not you,” said the 
little girl. “Suppose Cesare’d jump up and 
stab you, right there, before the judge could 
stop him.” 

“Oh, don’t be a goose, Cillie!” her brother 
protested. “Where would he get a knife, and 
what would he want to stab Tooralladdy for?” 

“ Why, for testifying on him, of course.” 

“Testifying on him! Huh! That’s just like 
a girl ! Tooralladdy isn’t the only one to testify, 
so why should he stab him ? And besides, the 
judge wouldn’t be the one to stop him; he sits 
on the bench, and Cesare will be among the 
policemen, I guess.” 

“ And he’ll have handcuffs on, too, won’t he ?” 


THE TRIAL 


187 


“I don’t know,” answered Dillie, hesita- 
tingly; “but, anyhow, he can’t hurt anybody.” 

“ Oh, I’m not afraid he’ll hurt me,” said 
Tooralladdy, with a rueful laugh; “at least, 
not now; but if he gets off, that’s the time I’m 
going to run away and hide from him, ’cause 
he’ll kill me, sure, then.” 

“Oh, I hope they’ll hang him!” cried Cillie, 
dancing up and down in terror. “ Or, anyway, 
put him in the penitentiary forever,” she added, 
relenting from her vindictiveness. 

“What a funeral-face my little girl has on,” 
said Senator Darbison, entering the room. 
“Why, you all look as though Tooralladdy were 
going to be tried for murder, himself. Come, 
come! This is a serious business, but not a 
cause for terror. Keep your wits about you, 
Tooralladdy, and don’t show that scared face 
in court. Now we must be off; and if we’re 
not back for dinner, we’ll be here for supper 
and then you’ll hear all about it, if we’re not 
starved to death. Good-bye!” 

“ Good-bye,” said Tooralladdy, less cheerily, 
but with some show of bravery; and to a chorus 
of good-byes from Mrs. Darbison and the chil- 
dren on the side porch, the two set forth on what 
Tooralladdy thought was going to be the most 
terrible day of his life. 


1S8 


THE TRIAL 


But it was not, after all; because, you know, 
“nothing is as good or as bad in reality as it is 
in anticipation.” 

The trial had been in progress three days and 
many witnesses had been heard who testified 
to the ill-will that existed between Cesare and 
Luigi, most of these showing a friendly feeling 
toward the dead man, but a few trying to give 
the impression that he was to blame equally 
with his murderer for any quarrels that had 
arisen between them. 

Tooralladdy had grown somewhat accus- 
tomed to the routine of the court-room, when 
he was startled by hearing the clerk’s voice call 
his name, and he went forward to the witness 
stand encouraged by a nod from his friend and 
a whispered “Keep your wits about you now!” 

The boy was permitted to tell, almost with- 
out interruption, the story of his pursuit of 
Cesare on the evening of the murder, and he 
pointed out, on a small map of the locality, the 
route he had taken, explaining why he had 
done so, and his almost certain knowledge of 
the course the murderer would take in his flight. 

On cross-examination he was asked why he 
had followed the man. 

“Because,” answered Tooralladdy, “I heard 
the fellows at the comer hollering murder, and 


THE TRIAL 


139 


when he ran past me and I saw him making for 
the Welsh Yard, I thought he’d get tangled up 
down there and if I kept sight of him I could tell 
the policemen, when they came, where he was.” 

“Weren’t you afraid of him.^” 

“Yes, I am”; and the boy glanced fearingly 
at the prisoner, who was glaring savagely at 
him. 

“You say you are; but were you not at the 
time ?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Why.?” 

“Because he had a knife in his hand and it 
was all bloody; and he had it in for me, 
anyhow.” 

“What for.?” 

“On account of Dave,” he replied, hesita- 
ingly. 

“ Dave ! Dave who ? ” 

“Dave Giffen.” 

“Had you and this Dave been badgering 
him .? ” 

“ I don’t know what badgering is, sir, but I 
hadn’t done nothing to him ; and Dave — ^he’s 
— he’s drowned.” 

A snarl from the prisoner and a flood of 
rapid speech in his native tongue here in- 
terrupted the proceedings, but Cesare was 


140 


THE TRIAL 


quickly silenced and the questioning of Too- 
ralladdy went on. 

“ Will you tell the court why Cesare had it in 
for you, as you say?” 

“ He knew I saw what he done to Dave, the 
time he was drowned.” 

“ What did he do to Dave ?” 

“Well, you see, a gang of us went in swim- 
ming that night, and we were diving off the 
ledge of the sewer and swimming out to the 
sand barge and back again. And then one time 
Cesare stayed on the barge, and when Dave 
swam out, he dared Dave to swim all around 
the barge. Dave was the bulliest swimmer in 
the lot and he wouldn't take a dare. ’Twasn’t 
much of a dare, anyhow, ’cause there wasn’t 
much suction under the barge, and when I saw 
Dave starting ’round the end of the barge, I 
thought I’d try it myself ; but Dave was pretty 
far ahead of me, and before I got ’round to the 
far end of the barge I heard Cesare yelling 
‘Help! Help!’ and things like that. I tried 
to see him, but I couldn’t see from where I was, 
so I kept on swimming, and when I got ’round 
the end — ” Tooralladdy paused; Cesare was 
muttering and scowling and the boy was mani- 
festly afraid of him. 

“ Well, what then ? ” asked the judge. “ Don’t 


THE TRIAL 141 

be afraid of the man; he shall not be allowed to 
harm you.” 

“I couldn’t see Dave,” Tooralladdy con- 
tinued, “ but Cesare was hanging over the side 
of the barge, holding on with one hand and foot, 
and the other hand and foot was in the water. 
I thought he had hold of Dave and couldn’t 
pull him out, so I yelled for help, too, and 
Cesare let go his hold and scrambled up on the 
barge. Then Dave bobbed up and threw up his 
arms like this, and Cesare reached down, I 
thought, to grab him; Dave got his fingers in a 
crack and I thought he was going to come out 
all right, but Cesare gave him a shove and Dave 
went down and didn’t come up no more.” 

There was a moment of breathless silence in 
the court room during which Tooralladdy 
looked earnestly at the judge and the judge 
and every one else in the room looked at the boy. 
Then the judge asked : 

“Do you mean to say that Cesare deliberately 
held Dave down beneath the water until he 
had drowned.^” 

“Yes, sir; that’s what I think. At least, he 
held him down until Dave was played out and 
couldn’t save himself.” 

“But why — why should he do anything so 
monstrous ?” 


142 


THE TRIAL 


“He and Dave had a fight that day, sir, about 
old man Giffen — I mean Dave’s father.” 

“Tell us about that.” 

“The old man was drunk, and some of the 
neighbors were poking fun at him, and Cesare 
promised Lucindy Gift some candy if she’d 
keep it up; and Dave went up to him and said 
he’d knock him down if he didn’t let his father 
alone; and then Cesare swore at Dave and 
Dave sassed him back and was going to hit 
him; but Cesare went away and shook his fist 
at Dave all the way up the street.” 

“How do you know all this ?” 

“I was with Dave and I saw it.” 

“And yet they went swimming together that 
evening ?” 

“All of us fellows were going, and when we 
started Cesare came, too.” 

“Did he and Dave quarrel on the way?” 

“Not exactly quarrel; but Cesare said some- 
thing about the old man, and Dave said if he 
didn’t shut up he’d hit him.” 

“And do you mean to say that you have 
known this for weeks and never told it to the 
other boys or to any one until now ?” 

“I told — ” the boy hesitated; “I told three 
persons. I told one the very next morning, and 
then I told another, and they told another; 


THE TRIAL 


143 


and they all said I might be mistaken and it 
was a terrible thing to say if it wasn’t true. 
But I know it is true. And he said — this last 
person said — I mustn’t breathe it to a soul unless 
he gave me leave.” 

“And has he now given you leave Who 
was it?” 

“It was Father Bacon. Yes, sir; he gave me 
leave.” 

“And who were the others ?” 

Tooralladdy looked across the court, and 
getting a quick nod from Senator Darbison, 
replied : 

“The first was Mrs. Darbison. I told her 
the next morning when I went after the pigs’ 
feed, ’cause she said she knew I had something 
on my mind, and I had. I was scared to death 
of Cesare and she said she’d tell the senator 
and Cesare shouldn’t hurt me.” 

“But about Cesare; did he ever threaten 
you or in any way give you to understand that 
he knew of your suspicions and was afraid of 
you?” 

“He watched me for a week or two and he 
saw I was kind of afraid of him; and one 
time he thought he had me in Mrs. Doolan’s 
shed, but it was Timmy; and Tim told me 
afterward that when he was in the shed and 


144 


THE TRIAL 


Cesare was on the roof of it, Cesare said that 
boys could be stuck with a knife as well as 
drowned, but Tim didn’t know what he meant 
and I didn’t tell him. And another time he 
saw me talking to Luigi and he asked me what 
I was saying to him, and I told him ‘nothing’; 
and he said I’d better not.” 

“And didn’t you think of all these things 
when you followed him through the Welsh 
Yard down to Drain street ? And weren’t you 
afraid to go ?” 

“No, sir, I didn’t think of anything but head- 
ing him off ; but I didn’t know how I was going 
to do it till I heard Uncle Dan’s voice down in 
Meiner’s saloon.” 

This was about the gist of Tooralladdy’s 
testimony, and although he was subjected to 
a lengthy cross-questioning, nothing more was 
elicited from him, nor could he be shaken in 
any of his previous statements. Whatever 
favorable impression Cesare’s witnesses may 
have made as to the ill-feeling between him 
and Luigi — and some of them swore strongly, if 
falsely — it was evident that Tooralladdy’s tes- 
timony had weight with the jury as showing 
the character of the accused. His statement 
it was said in the court-room, was the keystone 
of the prosecution, and the boy was depressed 


THE TRIAL 


145 


by the thought that perhaps he had put the 
noose around the murderer’s neck, even though 
his conscience acquitted him for having done so. 

It was late in the afternoon when he returned 
with Senator Darbison to' the house he had 
come to regard as his refuge and stronghold, 
if not his home ; and in recounting to Cillie and 
Dillie and their mother the big events of the 
day, he found his depression wearing off under 
the influence of their cheerfulness; but the 
sobering influence of that experience, and his 
whole connection with Cesare, never quite faded 
from his mind either as boy or man. 




CHAPTER XIII 


tooralladdy’s reward 

C ESARE’S sentence was one that lifted a 
weight — the fear of his vengeance — from 
Tooralladdy’s heart; for the jury brought in a 
verdict of murder in the second degree and the 
judge imposed a sentence of twenty years at 
hard labor. When the boy heard this news 
from the lips of his friend, Senator Darbison, 
a couple of days after his memorable appear- 
ance in court, he involuntarily breathed a deep 
sigh of relief. 

“By the time he gets out,” he innocently re- 
marked, “I guess I won’t be afraid of him; 
and maybe I won’t be living around here, 
anyhow.” 

“I hope not, my boy,” said the Senator, and 
flashed a twinkling glance of amusement at his 
wife; but she heard only the pathos of the 
boy’s remark and put her hand protectingly 
on his arm as he stood near her table in the 
school-room. 

“Twenty years from now,” the senator con- 
147 


148 


tooralladdy’s reward 


tinned, “I hope to see you a man of conse- 
quence in this or some other city, and not 
afraid of the possible vengeance of a murderous 
Italian.” 

“Yes, sir,” responded Tooralladdy, meekly 
and respectfully; but he thought in his heart 
that he would feel better, at all events, if he 
knew himself and Cesare to be many miles 
apart. 

“There’s a matter that concerns you, Tooral- 
laddy, and about which Father Bacon and I 
have had considerable thought and discussion; 
it concerns your future and your education.” 

“Am I not — ” Tooralladdy began, and then 
suddenly stopped, with anxious eyes looking 
from one to the other of his two best friends. 

“Not what?” asked Mrs. Darbison; but the 
boy was still silent. 

“What were you going to say, Edward ?” 
she urged. “Surely, you may speak freely and 
frankly to us.” 

“It — it sounds like begging,” he replied, 
reluctantly, “and I never did that; I intended 
some day, to pay you back in some way for all 
you’ve done for me, or, anyhow, to help some 
other fellow along in return for it; but ain’t I 
going to St. Ignatius’s, after all ?” 

“That’s just the point, Tooralladdy, that I 


tooralladdy’s reward 


149 


think you’ll have to decide for yourself. You 
know, Gallio has grown old and feeble and 
somewhat irresponsible since Luigi was killed, 
and his wife and daughters have had to take 
charge of his affairs and of the business. Now, 
Mrs. Gallio feels that it was owing to you, in 
all probability, that Cesare was captured, and 
it was your testimony, n the main, that con- 
victed him, and therefore she owes you some- 
thing in gratitude; and she has been consulting 
with Father Bacon as to what she can, or what 
would be best to do for you.” 

“Nothing!” interrupted the boy, impetuously. 
“I don’t want anything for helping to catch 
Cesare. That would seem like blood-money.” 

“No, no; you mustn’t feel that way about it 
at all! It wasn’t in any spirit of revenge that 
Mrs. Gallio attended the trial, though that may 
have entered more or less into the old man’s 
feelings, who is a thorough-going Italian, but 
in the interest of justice; and, naturally, with 
a vital interest and sorrow on account of her 
loss. And that she now desires and offers to 
do something for you, to assure your future, is 
not by way of pay, but in gratitude; and the 
payment of a debt is quite a different thing my 
boy, from the tribute of gratitude.” 

“Yes, sir; I know, sir; but why should she 


150 


tooralladdy’s reward 


do anything for me ? She’s not my friend, like 
you’ve been, and Mrs. Darbison.” 

“Perhaps because she never had the oppor- 
tunity, Edward. If she had known you be- 
fore — ” 

“No, no, she couldn’t have been as good to 
me as you’ve been,” the boy protested; “she’d 
never know how, though she might have meant 
to be. She might have taken me in, or given 
me a job, or even sent me to school; but she 
couldn’t have taught me things — made me 
see things like you all have done. Please don’t 
think sir, that I don’t thank her just the same 
for wanting to do it as if she had done it; but 
I’d rather do what you want.” 

“What we want, Edward, is what will be 
the best thing for you,” said Mrs. Darbison; 
“and that we can only decide — or, rather, you 
shall decide when you have heard both sides 
of the question.” 

“Yes’m,” answered the boy, with a gulp at 
the lump in his throat. 

“The case is this, Tooralladdy,” said Senator 
Darbison, kindly. “I can, and will, if you so 
decide, send you to St. Ignatius’s College for 
a term of years, until you decide what career 
or profession you would like to adopt; and I 
can also aid you, somewhat, to fit yourself for 


tooralladdy’s reward 151 

your career; but meantime you would be 
obliged to earn something for your own sup- 
port, and as you grow older you will nnd that 
more diflficult. I mean, you can not then 
black boots or sell papers or feed pigs or drive 
hack or run on errands as you do now; and 
you could scarcely take a clerkship and keep 
up your attendance at school. You can not al- 
ways, or even for very long, remain with Mrs. 
Doolan as tender of the pigs; nor will you be 
content to be at Tom Gorman’s beck and call 
early and late. Aside from the fact that these 
things will grow distasteful as your experience 
grows and your surroundings change, your 
studies will demand more and more time and 
attention and leave you less opportunity for 
labor. Then, as you must leave Mrs. Doolan — ” 

“She’s been mighty good to me,” the boy 
put in. 

“That she has! I trust you will never forget 
it; but she can not much longer accommodate 
you, now that Johnny is growing big enough 
to take your place. And when you leave her, 
it will be a hard matter to find another who 
will do as well by you. So, you see, circum- 
stances are thrusting you out of that groove. 
Now, Mrs. Gallio’s first suggestion to Father 
Bacon was that you were to go to the Prepar- 


152 tooralladdy’s reward 

atory Seminary; she has some idea, or some 
hope that you intend to be a priest.” 

Tooralladdy shook his head. 

“No, sir,” he said. “I never felt any call 
that way. I want to be an engineer and build 
railroads or bridges or dig mines.” 

“Very good. I told Father Bacon that I 
thought Mrs. Gallio was mistaken and he 
agreed with me; and when he had persuaded 
her that St. Thomas’s was out of the question 
for you, she eagerly urged that you be sent 
to some college, any college that he might 
select, where your comfort and your education 
would be assured. For this purpose she in- 
tends to place two thousand dollars in my 
hands, to be used for your benefit; and while 
it is a generous offer on her part, I assure you, 
my boy, that she can easily afford it, and so you 
need not hesitate on that score. If you accept 
her offer, your finances are assured for at 
least five years; with judicious management 
of the fund, for even a longer time; and as 
soon as you are on your feet you can think 
about making a return of her generosity. 
You see, you have the choice, on the one hand, 
between an education obtained under diffi- 
culties which may lengthen the struggle and 
perhaps dishearten you, and, on the other, a 


TOORALLADDY^S reward 15S 

speedier attainment of the end in view and an 
assured living while attaining it. Between 
these two you must choose — but not now,” 
he added hastily, seeing Tooralladdy about to 
speak. “Take a few days to think about it.” 

“I was only going to ask what you and 
Father Bacon would rather I should do,” said 
Tooralladdy. 

“They want you, first, to think the matter 
over thoroughly, Edward,” interposed Mrs. 
Darbison, “and then be able to give some good 
reason for your decision.” 

“And remember, Tooralladdy, that what- 
ever your decision may be, no one will find 
fault with it or with you. It is your affair, 
chiefly, and whichever way you may decide it, 
we will all be satisfied.” 

Tooralladdy pondered the matter of his 
future for several days, seeking information 
on one point or another from his three staunch 
friends, the Darbisons and Father Bacon; and 
finally he announced to the latter, after he had 
served his Mass on Sunday morning, that he 
had decided to accept Mrs. Gallio’s generosity, 
though he would much rather it had been that 
of his first and best friends. Following Father 
Bacon’s advice, he stopped on his way home 
to inform the senator and his wife of his deter- 


154 


tooralladdy’s reward 


mination; and there was a pleasant glow in 
his heart, which had hitherto been regretful, 
as he realized that his choice was the one that 
best pleased them. 

“I shall be sorry to lose my good scholar, 
Edward, but I think you have chosen well,” 
said Mrs. Darbison. 

“And so do I, my boy! This will be better 
for you than I could have done; and though 
we will miss you — sha’n’t we, chicks ?” 

“Um-hm,” said Dillie, sententiously; and 
Cillie bit her lip and nodded, but speedily in- 
quired : 

“Where is he going .5^” 

“To St. John’s ; and that’s about nine 
hundred miles away.” 

“And won’t he come home, ever ? Not even 
vacations 

“That is to be Edward’s home for the next 
five years. If he still remembers his old friends 
at the end of that time — ” 

“I’ll remember you,” said Tooralladdy, 
simply. 

“Perhaps he may then come to visit us be- 
fore setting out to make his fortune in the 
world.” 

“Yes’m,” again said Tooralladdy simply and 
earnestly. “And will you and Father Bacon 


tooralladdy’s reward 155 

kind of look after Uncle Dan he continued, 
turning to the man who represented to him all 
that a man should be and that he knew his 
uncle was not. 

“I will indeed, Tooralladdy, though I can’t 
promise you much on that score, I’m afraid,” 
said Mr. Darbison. 

“I know that, sir. He was one of the reasons 
I didn’t want to go; and yet, if I stay — ^he 
couldn’t do me any good,” he added, hesita- 
tingly, “and maybe I couldn’t do him any; but 
if I get away and do something for myself, 
I might be able to help him, too, after a while. 
Don’t you think so 

“Let us hope so, at any rate.” 

“You see, he’s all I’ve got; and he was good 
to me — good as he could be, I mean. He never 
bate me — beat me, I mean,” he corrected him- 
self, smiling to see how easily the old pronun- 
ciation slipped out when his thoughts reverted 
to the old days. 

Tooralladdy was to enter St. John’s College 
after the Christmas vacation; and as the 
journey would occupy several days, he was to 
leave home — the only home he had ever known 
— the day after Christmas, quite early in the 
morning. 

“Mama,” suggested Cillie, “let’s see the last 


156 tooralladdy’s reward 

of Tooralladdy all to ourselves. Let’s have liim 
here all of Christmas Day and all night, and 
send him away happy in the morning.” 

“A good idea, Cillie; I’m glad you thought 
of it,” answered her mother, and the plan 
seemed equally happy to Dillie and his father. 
So in the dusk of Christmas eve Tooralladdy ’s 
small and modest trunk was carried up the 
street from Mrs. Doolan’s in a borrowed 
wheelbarrow, and that good woman herself 
escorted it, to tell “the sinater” what a “foine 
felly” young Tooralladdy was, and that “anny- 
body who gave him a helpin’ hand would have 
the blessin’ o’ God” on him, so he would; and 
she modestly and in all honesty denied that she 
herself was entitled to a share in that blessing. 

“Arrah, what’s thaht!” she exclaimed; “a 
few shucks in a cupboard and the care o’ the 
craters marnin’, noon, and night! Could anny 
wan do less ? Sure, it’s yourself and herself 
that’s been the makin’ of him, not to mintion 
that poor wumman at the corner that has 
supped sorrah many’s the night an’ is puttin’ 
him in the place of the son she lost, God rest 
him! ’Tis all of ye that he’s beholden to, an’ 
may he never forget yez — an’ I’ll warrant he 
never will.” 

And she withdrew after bestowing on the 


tooralladdy’s reward 157 

abashed Tooralladdy a powerful and over- 
whelming embrace. 

Tooralladdy’s Christmas was a happy, happy 
day, made up of gayety and of quiet enjoyment, 
the exchange of a few pretty but simple gifts and 
the atmosphere of a loving household. Late in 
the afternoon he went to take a last look at the 
quiet school-room where he had learned so 
many lessons; and every haunt of the lawn 
and stable he visited “for the last time” with 
Dillie and Cillie; first one and then another 
of the trio saying “don’t you remember,” and 
“don’t forget,” or “this is the place — ” or 
“when you’re gone,” or “when I come back.” 

After tea, when they gathered around the 
library fire, that and the light of the tiny candles 
that burned before the stable of Bethlehem 
which had replaced the children’s Christmas 
tree since they had grown, was all the illumi- 
nation in the room as they softly sang the 
Christmas hymns and carols; and in the rosy 
glow Tooralladdy thought he could never see 
dearer or sweeter faces, even though he had 
had father, mother, sisters and brothers of his 
very own. 

“I’ll always have this day to remember,” 
he said, “no matter what comes or goes. 
You’ve always had it — maybe it’s nothing par- 


158 


tooralladdy’s reward 


ticular to you ; so you can’t know how I thank 
you for it, with all the other things I owe you.” 

There was a long silence and then Tooral- 
laddy spoke again. 

“I wonder what he’s doing now?” 

“Who ?” asked Dillie, in surprise. 

“Cesare,” he replied. “I’ve been thinking 
of him more or less all day. It seems rather 
rough on him that all my good fortune should 
have come from his crime and misfortune.” 

“I was thinking of him, too,” said Cillie, and 
she laughed softly. “You remember the night 
he killed poor Luigi,” she said, bending to- 
ward Dillie in the firelight, “and I laughed 
after I went to bed and you asked me what I 
was laughing at ?” 

“Yes,” he replied, “and you said I’d be 
shocked if you told me.” 

“Maybe you’ll be shocked now, ’cause I’m 
going to tell you. I was thinking of it just 
now — about Cesare. It isn’t wicked mama, 
nor unkind to Cesare — I was just thinking — ■ 
“if it wasn’t” — she broadened her vowels in 
imitation but not in mockery of Timmie Doo- 
lan — “if it wahsn’t’ for Tooralladdy he wudn’t 
be kotched.” 


PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROS., NEW YORK 


Standard Catholic Books 

PUBLISHED BY 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, 

CINCINNATI: NEW YORK: Chicago: 

343 MAIN ST. 36 AND 38 BARCLAY ST. 211-213 MADISON ST, 


DOCTRINE, INSTRUCTION, DEVOTION. 

Abandonment; or Absolute Surrender of Self to Divine Providence. 
Rev. J. P. Caussade, S.J. net, o 40 

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Tesniere. net, 1 25 
Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating the Catholic Catechism. 
Selected and Arranged by Rev. Francis Spirago, Professor of 
Theology. Supplemented, Adapted to the Baltimore Cate- 
chism, and Edited by Rev. James J. Baxter, D.D. net, i 50 

Apostles’ Creed, The. Muller, C.SS.R. net, 1 10 

Art of Profiting by Our Faults. Rev. J. Tissot. net, o 40 

Beginnings of Christianity. By Very Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, 
S.T.D., J.U.L., Professor of Church History in the Catholic 
University of Washington. net, 2 00 

Bible History. o 50 

Bible History, Practical Explanation and Application of. 

Nash. net, i 50 

Bible, The Holy. i 00 

Book of the Professed. 

Vol. I. net, o 75 

Vol. II. Vol. III. Each, net, o 60 

6 o 7 s and Girls’ Mission Book. By the Redemptorist Fathers. 

o 40 

Catechism Explained, The. Spirago-Clarke. net, 2 sc 

Catholic Belief. Faa di Bruno. Paper, 0.25; 100 copies, 15 oc 
Cloth, 0.50; 25 copies, 7 50 

Catholic Ceremonies and Explanation of the Ecclesiastical Year. 
Abbe Durand. Paper, 0.30; 25 copies, 4 50 

Cloth, 0.60; 25 copies, 9 00 

Catholic Practice at Church and at Home. Klauder. 

Paper, 0.30; r?s copies, 4 5° 

Cloth, 0.60; 25 copies, 9 00 

Catholic Teaching for Children. Winifride Wray. o 40 

Catholic Worship. Rev. R. Brennan, LL.D. 

Paper, 0.15; 100 copies, 10 00 

Cloth, 0.25; 100 copies, 17 00 

Ceremonial for Altar Boys. By Rev. Matthew Britt, O.S.B. o 3s 
Characteristics op True Devotion, Gtou. S.J. neU o 7S 


1 


Charity the Origin of Every Blessing. c 

Child of Mary. Prayer-Book. o 6o 

Child’s Prayer-Book of the Sacred Heart. o 20 

Christian Doctrine, Spirago’s Method of. Edited by Bishop 
Messmer. net, i 50 

Christian Father. Cramer. Paper, 0.25; 25 copies. 3 75 

Cloth, 0.40; 25 copies, 6 00 

Christian Mother. Cramer. Paper, 0.25; 25 copies, 3 75 

Cloth, 0.40; 25 copies, 6 00 

Church and Her Enemies. Rev. M. Muller, C.SS.R. net, i 10 

Comedy of English Protestantism. A. F. Marshall. net, o 75 

Confession. Paper, 0.05; per 100, net, 3 50 

Confirmation. Paper, 0.05; per 100, net, 3 50 

Communion. Paper, 0.05; per 100, 3 50 

Complete Office of Holy Week. o 50 

Devotion OF the Holy Rosary and the Five Scapulars, net, o 75 

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From the German of 
Rev. H. Noldin, S.J. Revised by W. H. Kent, O.S.C. net, i 25 
Devotions and Prayers for the Sick-Room. Krebs, C.SS.R. 

net, 1 00 

Devotions for First Friday. Huguet. o 40 

Dignity and Duties of the Priest; or Selva, a Collection of 

Material for Ecclesiastical Retreats. By St. Alphonsus de 
Liguori, net, i 25 

Dignity, Authority, Duties of Parents, Ecclesiastical and 

Civil Powers. By Rev. M. Muller, C.SS.R. net, i 40 

Divine Grace. A Series of Instructions arranged according to 
the Baltimore Catechism. Edited by Rev. Edmund J. Wirth, 
Ph.D., D.D. net, i 50 

Divine Office; Explanations of the Psalms and Canticles. By St. 
Alphonsus de Liguori. net, 1 25 

Epistles and Gospels. Large Print. o 25 

Eucharist and Penance. Rev, M. Muller, C.SS.R. net, i 10 
Eucharistic Christ. Reflections and Considerations on the 
Blessed Sacrament. Rev. A. Tesniere. net, i 00 

Eucharistic Gems. A Thought about the Most Blessed Sacra- 
ment for Every Day in the Year. C:)elenbier. 075 

Explanation of Commandments, Illustrated. i 00 

Explanation of the Apostles’ Creed, Illustrated. i 00 

Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doc- 
trine. Rev. Th. L. Kinkead. net, 1 00 

Explanation of the Commandments, Precepts of the Church. 

Rev. M. Muller, C.SS.R. net, 1 10 

Explanation of the Gospels and of Catholic Worship. Rev. L. 
A, Lambert. Paper, 0.30; 25 copies, 4 50 

Cloth, 0.60; 25 copies, 9 00 

Explanation of the Holy Sacraments, Illustrated. i 00 

Explanation op the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Rev. M. v. 
Cochem, 1 25 


2 


tiXPLANATION OF THE OUR FATHER AND THE HaIL MaRY. ReV. 


R. Brennan, LL.D. 075 

Explanation op the Prayers and Ceremonies op the Mass. 

Illustrated. Rev. D. I. Lanslots, O.S.B. 1 25 

Explanation of the Salve Regina. Liguori. o 75 

Extreme Unction. Paper, o.io; 100 copies, 6 00 

First and Greatest Commandment. Muller, C.SS.R. net, i 40 

First Communicant’s Manual. o 50 

Flowers op the Passion. Thoughts of St. ?aul of the Cross. By 
Rev. Louis Th. de Jesus-Agonisant. o 50 

Following of Christ. Thomas a Kempis. 

With Reflections, o 50 

Without Reflections, o 45 

Edition de luxe, i 2^ 

Four Last Things, The. Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. Med- 
itations. Father M. v. Cochem. Cloth, o 75 

Garland op Prayer. With Nuptial Mass. Leather. o 90 

General Confession Made Easy. Rev. A. Konings, C.SS.R. 

Flexible, o. is; i 00 copies, 10 00 

General Principles OF THE Religious Life. Verheyen. net, o 30 

Glories of Divine Grace. Dr. M. J. Scheeben. net, i 50 

Glories of Mary. St. Alphonsus de Liguori. 2 vols. net, 2 50 

Popular ed., i vol., i 25 


God the Teacher of Mankind. Muller. 9 vols. Per set, 9 50 


Goffine’s Devout Instructions. 140 Illustrations. Cloth i 00 

25 copies, 17 50 

Golden Sands. Little Counsels for the Sanctification and Hap- 
piness of Daily Life. 

Third, fourth and fifth series. each o 50 

Grace and the Sacraments. Muller, C.SS.R. net, 1 25 

Great Means op Salvation and of Perfection. St. Alphonsus 
de Liguori. net, 1 25 

Great Supper op God, The. By Rev. S. Coub 4 , S.J. Edited by 
Rev. F. X. Brady, S.J. Cloth, net, 1 00 

Greetings to The Christ-Child, a Collection of Poems for the 
Young. Illustrated. o 60 

Guide to Confession and Communion. o 60 


Handbook of the Christian Religion. Wilmers, S.J. net, 1 50 
Harmony op the Religious Life. Heuser. net, i 25 

Help for the Poor Souls in Purgatory. Prayers and Devotions 
in aid of the Suffering Souls. o so 

Helps to a Spiritual Life. From the German of Rev. Joseph 
Schneider, S.J. With Additions by Rev. F. Girardey, C.SS-R. 

net, 1 25 


Hidden Treasure: The Value and Excellence of the Holy Mass. 

By St. Leonard of Port Maurice. - o 50 

History op the Mass. By Rev. J. O’Brien. net, i 25 

Holy Eucharist. By St. Alphonsus de Liguori. net, i 25 

Holy Mass. By Rev. M. Muller, C.SS.R. net, 1 as 


3 


Holy Mass. By St. Alphonsus de Liguori. net , i aj 

How TO Comfort the Sick. Krebs, C.SS.R. net , i oo 

How TO Make the Mission. By a Dominican Father. Paper, o lo 
per loo, ^ 5 oo 

Illustrated Prayer-Book for Children. o 25 

Imitation of Christ. See “Following of Christ.” 

Imitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Translated by Mrs. A. 
R. Bennett-G-ladstone. 

Plain Edition, o 50 

Edition de luxe, i 50 

Imitation of the Sacred Heart. By Rev. F. Amoudt, S.J. En- 
tirely new, reset edition, i 25 

Immaculate Conception, The. By Rev. A. A. Lambing, LL.D. 

o 35 

Incarnation, Birth, and Infancy of Jesus Christ; or. The 
Mysteries of Faith. By St. Alphonsus de Liguori. net , i 25 

Indulgences, A Practical Guide to. Bernad, O.M.I. o 75 

In Heaven We Know Our Own. By P^re Blot, S.J. o 60 

Instructions and Prayers for the Catholic Father. Right 
Rev. Dr. A. Egger. o 60 

Instructions and Prayers for the Catholic Mother. Right 
Rev. Dr. A. Egger. o 60 

Instructions and Prayers for Catholic Youth. o 60 

Instructions for First Communicants. Schmitt. net , o 50 
Instructions on the Commandments of God and the Sacraments 
of the Church. By St. Alphonsus de Liguori. 

Paper, 0.25; 25 copies, 3 75 

Cloth, 0.40; 25 copies, 6 00 

Interior of Jesus and Mary. Grou. 2 vols. net , 2 ow 

Introduction to a Devout Life. By St. Francis de Sales. 

Cloth, o 53 

Letters OF St. Alphonsus DE Liguopi. 4 vols., each vol., i 25 

Letters of St. Alphonsus Liguori and General Alphabetical Index 

25 

25 

60 
35 
25 
25 

25 
25 


net , i 


net . 


to St. Alphonsus’ Works. 

Little Altar Boys’ Manual. 

Little Book of Superiors. “Golden Sands.” 

Little Child of Mary. A Small Prayer-Book. 

Little Manual of St. Anthony. Lasance. 

Little Manual of St. Joseph. Lings. 

Little Month of May. By Ella McMahon. Flexible, 

Little Month of the Souls in Purgatory. 

Little Office of the Immaculate Conception. 0.05; per 100 

2 50 

Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints. New, cheap edition, i 00 

Lives of the Saints. With Reflections for Every Day of the 
Year. Large size, i 50 

Living Church OF THE Living God. Coppens o.io; per 100, 6 00 
Manual of the Black Scapular of the Passion. o 50 


manual op the Holy Eucharist. Lasance. 

Manual op the Holy Family. 

Manual op the Holy Name. 

Manual op THr Sacred Heart, New. 

Manual op the Sodality op the Blessed Virgin. 

Manual of St. Anthony, Little. 

Manual op St. Anthony, New. 

Manual op St. Joseph, Little. Lings. 

Mari.e Corolla. Poems by Father Edmund of the Heart of 
Mary, C.P. Cloth, 

Mass Devotions and Readings on the Mass. 


75 

6o 

50 

50 

SO 

25 

60 

25 


I 25 


75 

00 

50 

M. 

00 


Lasance. 

Cloth, o 

May Devotions, New. Rev. Augustine Wirth, O.S.B. net , i 
Means op Grace. By Rev. Richard Brennan, LL.D. 2 

Meditations for all the Days of the Year. By Rev. 

Hamon, S.S. 5 vols., net , 5 

Meditations for Every Day in the Year. Baxter. net , i 

Meditations for Every Day in the Year. Vercruysse, 2 vols., 

net , 2 75 

Meditations for Retreats. St. Francis de Sales. Cloth, ne<, o 75 
Meditations on the Four Last Things. Cochem. o 75 

Meditations on the Last Words prom the Cross. Father 
Charles Perraud. net , o 50 

Meditations on the Life, the Teachings, and the Passion op 
Jesus Christ. Ilg-Clarke. a vols., net , 3 50 

Meditations on the Month op Our Lady. Mullaney. 
Meditations on the Passion or Our Lord. 

Metfod of Christian Doctrine, Spirago’s. net . 


o 75 

0 40 

1 50 


Middle Ages, The: Sketches and Fragments. 
Thomas J. Shahan, S.T.D., J.U.L. 


By Very Rev. 
net , a 00 


Miscellany. Historical Sketch of the Congregation of the Most 
Holy Redeemer. By St. Alphonsus de Liguori. net , i 25 

Mission Book for the Married. Girardey, C.SS.R. o 50 

Mission Book for the Single. Girardey, C.SS.R. o 50 

Mission Book of the Redemptorist Fathers. o 50 

Moments Before the Tabernacle. Rev. M. Russell, S.J. net , o 40 

Month, New, of the Sacred Heart. St. Francis de Sales, o 25 

Month op May: a Series of Meditations on the Mysteries of the 
Life of the Blessed Virgin. By F. Debussi, S.J. o 50 

Month OF THE Souls IN Purgatory, "Golden Sands.” o 25 

Moral Briefs. By the Rev. John H. Stapleton. net , i 25 

Most Holy Rosary. Thirty-one Meditations. Right Rev. W. 

Cramer, D.D. o 50 

Most Holy Sacrament. Rev. Dr. Jos. Keller. o 75 

My First Communion: The Happiest Day of My Life. Brennan. 

o 75 

My Little Prayer-Book. Illustrated. o la 


New May Devotions. Wirth. net, 

New Month of the Holy Angels. 

New Month of the Sacred Heart. 

New Sunday-School Companion. 

New Testament. Cheap Edition. 

32mo, flexible cloth, net, 

32mo, lambskin, limp, round corners, gilt edges, net. 

New Testament. Illustrated Edition. 

i6mo. Printed in two colors, with loo full-page ill., net, 

i6mo, Rutland Roan, limp, solid gold edges, net. 

New Testament. India Paper Edition. 

American Seal, limp, round comers, gilt edges, net, 

Persian Calf, limp, round corners, gilt edges, _ net, 

Morocco, limp, round corners, gold edges, gold roll inside, net. 

New Testament. Large Print Edition. 

i2mo,large, net, 

1 2mo, American Seal, limp, gold edges, net. 

New Testament Studies. Conaty, D.D i2mo. 

Office, Complete, of Holy Week. 

On the Road to Rome. By W. Richards. net. 

Our Favorite Devotions. By Very Rev. Dean A. A. Lings. 

Our Favorite Novenas. By Very Rev. Dean A. A. Lings. 

Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano. Dillon, D.D. 

Our Monthly Devotions. By Very Rev. Dean A. A. Lings. 

Our Own Will and How to Detect It in Our Actions. 

John Allen, D.D. net. 

Paraclete, The. Devotions to the Holy Ghost. 

Paradise on Earth Open to all; A Religious Vocation the Surest 
Way in Life. By Rev. Antonio Natale, S.J. net, o 40 

Parish Priest on Duty, The. A Practical Manual for Pastors, 
Curates, and Theological Students Preparing for the Mission. 
(The Sacraments.) By Rev. Herman J. Heuser, Professoi 
of Theology at Overbrook Seminary. net, o 6c 

Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. By St. Alphonsus 
Liguori. net, 1 

Passion Flowers. Poems by Father Edmund, of the Heart 
Mary, C.P. i 

Pearls from Faber. Brunowe. o 

Pearls of Prayer. o 

People’s Mission Book, The. Paper, o.io; per 100, 6 

Pepper and Salt, Spiritual. Stang. Paper, 0.30; 25 copies, 4 
Cloth, 0.60, 25 copies, 9 

Perfect Religious, The. De la Motte. Cloth, net, 1 00 

Pictorial Lives of the Saints. New edition, with Reflections 
for Every Day in the Year. 8vo, 2 50 

Pious Preparation for First Holy Communion. Rev. F. X. 

Lasance. Cloth. o 75 

Pocket Manual. A Vest-pocket Prayer-book, very large type ,0 25 
Popular Instructions on Marriage. Girardey, C.SS.R. 

Paper, 0.2s; 25 copies, 3 75 

Cloth, 0.40; 25 copies, 6 00 

6 


25 

25 

25 

I 

75 
60 

25 

90 
10 

25 

75 
50 

60 
50 
50 
o 75 
o 75 

0 75 

1 25 

Rev. 
o 75 
o 60 


de 

25 

O! 

25 

50 

35 

00 

50 

03 


Popular Instructions on Prayer. Girardey, C.SS.R. 

Paper, 0.25; 25 copies, 3 75 

Cloth, 0.40; 2$ copies, '' 6 00 

Popular Instructions to Parents on the Bringing Up of Children. 
By Very Rev. F. Girardey, C.SS.R. Paper, 0.25; 25 copies, 3 75 
Cloth, 0.40; 25 copies, 6 00 

Prayer-Book for Religious. A Complete Manual of Prayers 
and Devotions for the Use of the Members of all Religious 
Communities. By Rev. F. X. Lasance. net, i 50 

Preaching. Vol.^ XV. St. Alphonsus de Liguori. The Exercises 
of the Missions. Various Counsels. Instructions on the 
Commandments and Sacraments. net, 1 25 

Preparation for Death. St. Alphonsus de Liguori. Considera- 
tions on the Eternal Truths. Maxims of Eternity. Rule of 
Life. net, 1 25 

Prodigal Son; or, The Sinner’s Return to God. net, i 00 

Reasonableness of Catholic Ceremonies and Practices. Rev. 

J. J. Burke. o 35 

Religious State, The. With a Treatise on the Vocation to the 
Priesthood. By St. Alphonsus de Liguori. o 50 

Revelations of the Sacred Heart to Blessed Margaret Mary. 

Bougaud. Cloth, net, i 50 

Rosary, The, the Crown op Mary. By a Dominican Father. 010 

per 100, 5 00 


Rosary, The: Scenes and Thoughts. By Rev. F. P. Gaiesch^, S.J. 


o 50 

Rosary, The Most Holy. Meditations. Cramer. o 50 

Sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church. Rev. A. A. 
Lambing, D.D. Paper, 0.30; 25 copies, 4 50 

Cloth, 0.60; 25 copies, 9 00 

Sacramentals — Prayer, etc. Rev. M. Muller, C.SS.R. net, i 00 
Sacred Heart Book, The. By Rev. F. X. Lasance. 075 

Sacred Heart, The. Rev. Dr. Joseph Keller. o 75 

Sacrifice of the Mass Worthily Celebrated, The. Rev. 

Father Chaignon, S.J. net, i 50 

Secret of Sanctity. St, Francis de Sales. net, x 00 

Seraphic Guide, The. A Manual for the Members of the Third 
Order of St. Francis. By a Franciscan Father. o 60 

Short Conferences on the Little Office of the Immaculate 
Conception. Very Rev. J. Rainer. o 50 

Short Stories on Christian Doctrine. Prom the French by 
Mary McMahon. net, o 75 

Short Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, Lasance. 025 


Sick Calls; or. Chapters on Pastoral Medicine. By the Rev. 

Alfred Manning Mulligan, Birmingham, England. net, i 00 
Socialism and Christianity. By the Right Rev. William Stang, 
D.D. net, i 00 


SODALISTS’ VaDE MeCUM. O 50 

Songs and Sonnets. Maurice Francis Egan. i oo 

Spirit of Sacrifice, The, and the Life of Sacrifice in the Religious 
State. From the original of Rev. S. M. Giraud. Revised by 
Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J. net, 2 


% 


Spiritual Crumbs for Hungry Little Souls. Richardson, o so 

Spiritual Despondency and Temptations. By Rev. P. J. Michel, 
S.J. From the French by Rev. F. P. Garesche, S.J. net, i 25 

Spiritual Exercises for a Ten Days’ Retreat. Very Rev. R. v. 
Smetana, C.SS.R. net, i 00 

Spiritual Pepper and Salt. Stang. Paper, 0.30; 25 copies, 4 50 
Cloth, 0.60; 25 copies, 9 00 

St. Anthony, Little Manual of. o 60 


St. Anthony. Rev. Dr. Jos. Keller. o 75 

Stations op the Cross. Illustrated. o 50 

Stories for First Communicants. Rev. J. A. Keller, D.D. o 50 
Striving after Perfection. Rev Joseph Bayma, S.J. net, i 00 

Sure Way to a Happy Marriage. Rev. Edward I. Taylor. 

Paper, 0.25; 25 copies, ^ 3 75 

Cloth, 0.40; 25 copies, " 6 00 

Thoughts and Counsels for the Consideration of Catholic Young 
Men. Rev. P. A. Doss, S.J. net, i 25 

Thoughts for All Times. Mgr. Vaughan. o 90 

Traveller’s Daily Companion. 0.05; per 10 3 50 

True Politeness. Abbe Francis Demore. net, o 60 

True Spouse of Jesus Christ. St. Alphonsus de Liguori. 2 vols. 
Centenary Edition, net, 2 50 

The same, one-vol. edition, net, 1 00 

Two Spiritual Retreats for Sisters. Rev. E. Zollner. net, 1 00 
Veneration of the Blessed Virgin. Her Feasts, Prayers, Re- 
ligious Orders, and Sodalities. Rev. B. Rohner, O.S.B. i 25 
Vest-Pocket Gems op Devotion. o 20 


Victories op the Martyrs; or. The Lives of the Most Celebrated 
Martyrs of the Church. Vol. IX. Alphonsus de Liguori. i 25 
Visits, Short, to the Blessed Sacrament. Lasance. o 25 

Visits to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. By the Author of 
“Avis Spirituels.’’ o 50 

Visits to Jesus in the Tabernacle. Hours and Half-Hours of 
Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. With a Novena to 
the Holy Ghost and Devotions for Mass, Holy Communion, etc. 
Rev. F. X. Lasance. Cloth, i 25 

Visits to the Most Holy Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin 
Mary. St. Alphonsus de Liguori. o 50 

Vocations Explained: Matrimony, Virginity, The Religious State, 
and the Priesthood. By a Vincentian Father. o 10 

100 copies, 6 00 

Way op Interior PeaCE. Rev. Father De Lehen, S.J. net, i 25 
Way of Salvation and Perfection. Meditations, Pious Reflec- 
tions, Spiritual Treatises. St. Alphonsus de Liguori. net, i 25 
Way of THE Cross. Paper, 0.05; i 00 copies, 2 50 

What the Church Teaches. An Answer to Earnest Inquirers. 
By Rev. Edwin Drury, Missionary Priest. 

Paper, 0.30; 25 copies. 

Cloth, 0,60; 25 copies. 


8 


4 50 

o 00 


JUVENILES, 

Adventures of a Casket. 

Adventures op a French Captain. 

An Adventure with the Apaches. Gabriel Ferry. 
Anthony. A Tale of the Time of Charles II. of England. 
Armorer op Solingen. William Herchenbach. 

As True as Gold. Mary E. Mannix. 

Berkleys, The. Emma Howard Wight. 

Bertha; or, Consequences of a Fault. 

Better Part. 

Bistouri. a. Melandri, 

Black Lady, and Robin Red Breast. Canon Schmid. 
Blanche de Marsilly. 

Blissylvania Post-Office. Marion Ames Taggart. 

Bob o’ Link. Mary T. Waggaman. 

Boys in the Block. Maurice F. Egan. 

Bric-a-Brac Dealer. 

Bunt and Bill. Clara Mulholland. 

Buzzer’s Christmas. Mary T. Waggaman. 

By Branscome River. Marion Ames Taggart. 

Cake and the Easter Eggs. Canon Schmid. 

Canary Bird. Canon Schmid. 

Captain Rougemont. 

Cassilda; or. The Moorish Princess. 

Catholic Home Library, io vols. Each, 

Cave by the Beech Fork, The. Spalding, S.J. Cloth, 
College Boy, A. Anthony Yorke. Cloth, 
Conversations on Home Education. 

Dimpling’s Success. Clara Mulholland. 

Episodes of the Paris Commune. 

Every-Day Girl, An. Mary C. Crowley. 

Fatal Diamonds. E. C. Donnelly. 

Finn, Rev. F. J., S.J.: 

His First and Last Appearance. Illustrated. 

That Football Game. 

The Best Foot Forward. 

Ethelred Preston. 

Claude Lightfoot. 

Harry Dee. 

Tom Playfair. 

Percy Wynn. 

Mostly Boys. 

Fisherman’s Daughter. 

Five O’ Clock Stories; or. The Old Tales Told Again. 
Flower of the Flock, The, and the Badgers of Belmont. 
F. Egan. 

Fred’s Little Daughter. Sara Trainer Smith. 

9 


o 45 
o 45 
o A-c 
o 45 
o 40 
O 45 
o 45 
o 45 
o 45 
o 45 
o 25 
o 45 
o 45 
o 45 
o 25 
o 45 
o 45 
o 25 
o 45 
o 2$ 
o 40 
o 45 
o 45 
o 45 
o 8s 
o 85 
o 45 
o 45 
o 45 
o 45 

0 25 

1 00 
o 8s 
o 85 
o 8s 
o 85 
o 8s 
o 8s 
o 8s 
o 8s 
o 45 
o 75 

Maurice 
o 85 

o 45 


©ERTRUDB'o liXPERIENCE. O 45 

Godfrey the Hermit. Canon Schmid. o 2j 

Golden Lily, The. Katharine T. Hinkson. o 45 

Great Captain, The. By Katharine T. Hinkson. o 45 

Great-Grandmother’s Secret. o 45 

Haldeman Children, The. By Mary E. Mannix. o 45 

Harry Dee; or. Working It Out. By Father Finn. o 85 

Harry Russell. A Rockland College Boy. By Rev. J. E. 

Copus, S.J. [Cuthbert]. o 85 

Heir of Dreams, An. Sallie Margaret O’Malley. o 45 

Her Father’s Right Hand. o 45 

His First and Last Appearance. By Father Finn. i 00 

Hop Blossoms. Canon Schmid. o 25 

Hostage of War, A. Mary G. Bonesteel. o 45 

How They Worked Their Way. Maurice F. Egan. ' o 75 

Inundation, The. Canon Schmid. o 40 

Jack Hildreth Among the Indians. 2 vols. Each, o 85 

Jack Hildreth on the Nile. Marion Ames Taggart. Cloth, o 85 

Jack O’ Lantern. Mary T. Waggaman. o 45 

Juvenile Round Table. First Series. Stories by the Best 
Writers. i 00 

Juvenile Round Table. Second Series. i 00 

Klondike Picnic. Eleanor C. Donnelly. o 85 

Lamp of the Sanctuary. Cardinal Wiseman. o 25 

Legends of the Holy Child Jesus from Many Lands. A. Fowler 
Lutz. o 75 

Little Missy. Mary T. Waggaman. o 45 

Loyal Blue and Royal Scarlet. Marion A. Taggart. o 85 

Madcap Set at St. Anne’s. Marion J. Brunowe. o 45 

Marcelle. a True Story. 045 

Mary Tracy’s Fortune. Anna T. Sadlier. o 45 

Master Fridolin. Emmy Giehrl. o 25 

Milly Aveling. Sara Trainer Smith. Cloth, o 85 

Mysterious Doorway. Anna T. Sadlier. o 45 

My Strange Friend. By Father Finn. o 25 

Nan Nobody. Mary T. Waggaman. o 45 

Old Charlmont’s Seed-Bed. Sara Trainer Smith. o 45 

Old Robber’s Castle. Canon Schmid. o 25 

Olive and the Little Cakes. o 45 

Our Boys’ and Girls’ Library. 14 vols. Each, o 25 

Our Young Folks’ Library. 10 vols. Each, o 45 

Overseer of Mahlbourg. Canon Schmid. o 25 

Pancho and Panchita. Mary E. Mannix. o 40 

Pauline Archer. Anna T. Sadlier. o 45 

Pickle and Pepper. Ella Loraine Dorsey. p 85 

10 


Playwater Plot, The. By Mary T. Waggaman. o 6o 

Priest of Auvrigny. o 45 

Queen’s Page. Katharine Tynan Hinkson. o 45 

The Race for Copper Island. Rev. H. S. Spalding, S.J. o’ 85 

Recruit Tommy Collins. Mary G. Bonesteel. o 45 

Richard; or, Devotion to ^e Stuarts. o 45 

Rose Bush. Canon Schmid. o 25 

Saint Cuthbert’s. By Rev. J. E. Copus, S.J. o 85 

Sea-Gull’s Rock. J. Sandeau. o 45 

Shadows Lifted. Rev. J. E. Copus, S.J. o 85 

Sheriff of the Beech Fork, The. Rev. H. S. Spalding, S.J. o 85 

Strong-Arm of Avalon. By Mary T. Waggaman. o 85 

Summer at Woodville. Anna T. Sadlier. o 45 

Tales and Legends Of the Middle Ages. F. De Capella. 075 
Tales and Legends Series. 3 vols. Each, o 75 

Talisman, The. By Anna T. Sadlier. o 60 

Taming of Polly. Ella Loraine Dorsey. o 85 

Three Girls and Especially One. Marion A. Taggart. o 45 

Three Little Kings. Emmy Giehrl. o 25 

Tom’s Luckpot. Mary T. Waggaman. o 45 

Transplanting of Tessie, The. By Mary T. Waggaman. o 60 

Treasure of Nugget Mountain. M. A. Taggart. o 85 

Two Little Girls. By Lilian Mack. o 45 

Village Steeple, The. o 45 

Wager of Gerald O’Rourke, The. Finn-Thiele. net, o 35 

WiNNETOU, THE Apache Knight. Marion Ames Taggart. o 85 
Wrongfully Accused. William Herchenbach. o 40 

Young Color Guard, The. By Mary G. Bonesteel. o 45 

NOVELS AND STORIES. 

“But Thy Love and Thy Grace.’’ Rev, F. J. Finn, S.J. i 00 

Carroll Dare. By Mary T. Waggaman. i 25 

Circus Rider’s Daughter, The. A Novel. F. v. Brackel. i 25 
Connor D’Arcy’s Struggles. A Novel. Bertholds. i 25 

Corinne’s Vow. Mary T. Waggaman. i 25 

Dion and the Sibyls. A Classic Novel. Miles Keon. Cloth, i 25 
Fabiola. By Cardinal Wiseman. Popular Illustrated Edition, o 90 
Fabiola’s Sisters. A. C. Clarke. i 25 

Fatal Beacon, The. A Novel. By F. v. Brackel. i 25 

Hearts of Gold. A Novel. By I. Edhor. i 25 

Heiress of Cronenstein, The. Countess Hahn-Hahn. i 25 

Her Father’s Daughter. Katharine Tynan Hinkson. net, i 25 

Idols; or. The Secret of the Rue Chaussee d’Antin. De Navery. 

I 25 

In the Days of King Hal. Marion Ames Taggart. net, i 25 
“Kind Hearts AND Coronets.’’ A Novel. By J. Harrison, i 25 
Let No Man Put Asunder. A Novel. Josephine Mari^. i 00 


II 


Linked Lives. A T>rovel. Lady Gertrude Douglas. i 50 

Marcella Grace. A Novel. Rosa Mulholland. Illustrated 


25 
25 

25 
25 
25 
25 
25 
25 

cxf 
By 
I 25 
I 00 


Edition. 

Miss Erin. A Novel. M. E. Francis. 

Monk’s Pardon, The. Raoul de Navery. 

Mr. Billy Buttons. A Novel. Walter Lecky. 

Outlaw of Camargue, The. A Novel. A. de Lamothe. 

Passing Shadows. A Novel. Anthony Yorke. 

Pere Monnier’s Ward. A Novel. Walter Lecky. 

PiLKiNGTON Heir, The. A Novel. By Anna T. Sadlier. 
Prodigal’s Daughter, The. Lelia Hardin Bugg. 

Red Inn op St. Lyphar, The. A Romance of La Vendee 
Anna T. Sadlier. 

Romance of a Playwright. Vte. Henri de Bomier. 

Round Table of the Representative American Catholic 
Novelists. i 50 

Round Table of the Representative French Catholic Novel- 
ists. I 50 

Round Table of the Representative German Catholic 
Novelists. Illustrated. i 50 

Round Table of the Representative Irish and English Cath- 
olic Novelists. i 50 

Ruler of The Kingdom, The. And other Phases of Life and 
Character. By Grace Keon. i 25 

That Man’s Daughter. By Henry M. Ross. i 25 

True Story of Master Gerard, The. By Anna T. Sadlier. i 25 

Unraveling of a Tangle, The. By Marion A. Taggart. i 25 

Vocation op Edward Conway. A Novel. Maurice F. Egan, i 25 

Way THAT Led Beyond, The. By J. Harrison. i J5 

Woman op Fortune, A. Christian Reid. i 25 

World Well Lost. Esther Robertson. o 75 


LIVES AND HISTORIES. 

Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyola. Edited by Rev. J. F. X. 

O’ Conor. Cloth. net , i 25 

Bible Stories for Little Children. Paper, o.io. Cloth, o 20 
Church History. Businger. o 75 

Historiographia Ecclesiastica quam Historiae seriam Solidamque 
Operam Navantibus, AccommodavitGuil. Stang, D.D. net , i 00 
History of the Catholic Church. Brueck. 2 vols. net , 3 00 
History op the Catholic Church. Shea. i 50 

History of the Protestant Reformation in England and 
Ireland. Wm. Cobbett. Cloth, net , o 75 

Letters of St. Alphonsus Liguori. Rev. Eugene Grimm, C.SS.R. 

Centenary Edition, s vols., each, net , i 25 

Life and Life-Work of Mother Theodore Guerin, Foundress 
of the Sisters of Providence at St.-Mary-of-the-Woods, Vigo 
County, Indiana. net , 2 00 


12 


Life op Christ. Illustrated. Father M. v. Cochem. i 25 

Life op Fr. Francis Poilvache, C.SS.R. Paper, net, o 20 

Life of Most Rev. John Hughes. Brann. net, o 75 

Life of Mother Fontbonne, Foundress of the Sisters of St. Joseph 
of Lyons. Abbe Rivaux. Cloth, net, i 25 

Life of Sister Anne Katherine Emmerich, of the Order of St. 

Augustine. Rev. Thomas Wegener, O.S.A. net, i 50 

Life of St. Anthony. Ward. Illustrated. o 75 

Life of St. Catharine of Sienna. Edward L. Aym^, M.D. i 00 
Life of St. Clare of Montefalco. Locke, O.S.A. net, o 75 

Life of Mlle. Le Gras. net, i 25 

Life of St. Chantal. Bougaud. 2 vols. net, 4 00 

Life OF THE Blessed Virgin. Illustrated. Rohner, O.S.B. i 25 
Little Lives of Saints for Children. Illustrated. Cloth, o 75 
Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints. New, cheap edition, i 00 
Lives op the Saints. With Reflections for Every Day. i 50 

Our Lady op Good Counsel in Genazzano. o 75 

Pictorial Lives of the Saints. Cloth, 2 50 

Reminiscences of Rt. Rev. E. P. Wadhams, net, i 00 

St. Anthony, the Saint of the Whole World. o 75 

Story of Jesus. Illustrated. o 60 

Story of the Divine Child. Very Rev. Dean A. A. Lings. 075 
Victories of the Martyrs. St. Alphonsus de Liguori. net, i 25 
Visit to Europe and the Holy Land. Rev. H. Fairbanks, i 50 


THEOLOGY. LITURGY, SERMONS, SCIENCE, AND 
PHILOSOPHY. 

Abridged Sermons, for All Sundays of the Year. St. Alphonsus 
de Liguori. Centenary Edition. Grimm, C.SS.R. net, i 25 
Blessed Sacrament, Sermons on the. Edited by Rev. F. X. 

Lasance. i So 

Breve Compendium Theologiae Dogmaticae et Moralis. 

Berthier. 2 50 

Children of Mary, Sermons for the. From the Italian of 
Rev. F. Callerio. Edited by Rev. R. F. Clarke, S.J. ne: i 50 
Children’s Masses, Sermons for. Frassinetti-Lings. net, i 50 
Christian Apologetics. By Rev. W. Devivier, S.J. Edited b" 
the Rt. Rev. S. G. Messmer, D.D. * 1.' 

Christian Philosophy. A Treatise on the Human Soul. Rev. 

J. T. Driscoll. S.T.L. i 5° 

Christian Philosophy: God. Driscoll. 1 25 

Christ in Type and Prophecy. Maas, S.J. 2 vols., net, 4 00 
Church Announcement Book. o 25 

Church Treasurer’s Pew-Collection and Receipt Book, net, i 00 
Compendium Juris Canonici. Smith. 2 00 

Compendium Juris Regularium. EdiditP. Aug. Bachofen.we^, 2 so 
Compendium Sacrae Liturgiae Juxta Ritum Romanum, Wapel- 
horst. Editio sexta emendation * So 

13 


COMPBNDIUM ThEOLOGIAE DOGMATICAE ET MoRALIS. 


Berthier. 
net, 2 sc 


oo 

oo 

oo 


2 so 
2 so 

2 so 

2 oo 
2 oo 
Rev. 
2 so 


2S 

oo 

25 


Confessional, The. Right Rev. A. Roeggl, D.D. net, 

De Philosophia Morali Praelectiones. Russo. net. 

Ecclesiastical Dictionary. Rev. John Thein. net. 

Elements of Ecclesiastical Law. Rev. S. B. Smith, D.D. 
Ecclesiastical Persons. net. 

Ecclesiastical Punishments. net. 

Ecclesiastical Trials. net. 

Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII. net. 

Funeral Sermons. Rev. Aug. Wirth, O.S.B. 2 vols., net, 
General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scriptures. 

Francis E. Gigot, S.S. Cloth, net, 

God Knowable and Known. Rev. Maurice Ronayne, S.J. net. 

Good Christian, The. Rev. J. Allen, D.D. 2 vols., net, 
History of the Mass. Rev. John O’Brien. net, 

Hunolt’s Sermons. 12 vols., net, 25 00 

Hunolt’s Short Sermons. 5 vols., net, 10 00 

Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures. Gigot. net, 1 50 
Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament. Vol. I. 

Gigot. net, 1 50 

Jesus Living in the Priest. Millet-Byme. net, 2 00 

Last Things, Sermons on the Four. Hunolt. 2 vols. net, 5 00 

Lenten Sermons. Edited by Rev. Aug. Wirth, O.S.B. net, 2 00 

Liber Status Animarum. Pocket Edition, net, 0.25; half 

leather, net, 2 00 

Moral Principles and Medical Practice, the Basis of Medical 
Jurisprudence. Rev. Charles Coppens, S.J. net, i 50 

Natural Law and Legal Practice. Holaind, S.J. net, i 75 
New and Old Sermons. Wirth, O.S.B. 8 vols., net, 16 00 

Outlines OF Dogmatic Theology. Hunter, S.J. 3 vols., net, 4 50 
Outlines of Jewish History. By Gigot, S.S. net. 

Outlines of New Testament History. Gigot. Cloth, net. 
Pastoral Theology. Rev. Wm. Stang, D.D. net. 

Penance, Sermons on. Hunolt, 2 vols., net. 

Penitent Christian, The. Sermons. By Rev. F. Hunolt. 

Translated by Rev. John Allen, D.D. 2 vols., net, 5 00 

Pew-Rent Receipt Book. 

Philosophia de Morali. Russo. 

Political and Moral Essays. Rickaby, S.J. 

Praxis Synodalis. Manuale Synodi Diocesanae ac Provincialis 
Celebrandae. net, o 60 

Regietrum Baptismorum. 

Registrum Matrimoniorum. 

Relation of Experimental Psychology to Philosophy. Mgr, 
Mercier. net, o 35 

Rituale Compendiosum seu Ordo Administrandi quaedam Sacra^ 
menta et alia Officia Ecclesiastica Rite Peragendi ex Rituali 
Romano, novissime editio desumptas. net, o 9c 

Rosary, Sermons on the Most Holy. Frings. net, 1 or 

14 


50 

so 

SO 

00 


net, I 00 
net, 2 00 
net, I 50 


net, 3 50 
net, 3 50 


JSANCTUARY BoYs’ ILLUSTRATED Manual. McCallen. net , o 50 
Sermons, Abridged, for Sundays. Liguori. net , 1 25 

Sermons for Children of Mary. Callerio. net , i 50 

Sermons for Children s Masses. Frassinetti-Lings. net , i 50 

Sermons for the Sundays and Chief Festivals of the Ecclesi- 
astical Year. Rev. J. Pottgeisser, S.J. 2 vols.. net , 2 50 
Sermons from the Latins. Baxter. net , 2 00 

Sermons, Funeral. Wirth. 2 vols., net , 2 00 

Sermons, Hunolt’s. 12 vols., net , 25 00 

Sermons, Hunolt's Short. 5 vols., net. 10 00 

Sermons, Lenten. Wirth. net , 2 00 

Sermons, New and Old. Wirth. 8 vols., net , 16 00 

Sermons on Devotion to Sacred Heart. Bierbaum. net , o 75 
Sermons ON THE Blessed Sacrament. Scheurer-Lasance. net , 1 50 
Sermons on the Rosary. Frings. net , i 00 

Short Sermons for Low Masses. Schouppe, S.J. net , i 25 

Socialism Exposed and Refuted. Cathrein. net , i 50 

Special Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament. 

Part I. Gigot. net , i 50 

Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae. Tanquerey, S.S. 3 vols., 

net , 5 25 

Synopsis Theologia Moralis et Pastoralis. Tanquerey. 2 vols., 

net , 3 50 

Theologia Dogmatica Specialis. Tanquerey. 2 vols., net , 3 so 
Theologia Fundamentalis. Tanquerey. net , 17$ 

Views of Dante. By E. L. Rivard, C.S.V. net , i 25 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

A Gentleman. M. F. Egan, LL.D. o 75 

A Lady. Manners and Social Usages. Lelia Hardin Bugg. o 75 
Bone Rules; or. Skeleton of English Grammar. Tabb, A.M. o 50 
Catholic Home Annual. Stories by Best Writers. o 25 

Correct Thing for Catholics, The. Lelia Hardin Bugg. o 73 
Eve of the Reformation, The. Bishop Stang. net , o 25 

Guide for Sacristans. net , o 75 

How TO Get On. Rev. Bernard Feeney. i 00 

Little Folks’ Annual, o.io; per 100, 7 50 

Statistics on Education in the Philippines. Hedges. o 10 

PRAYER-BOOKS. 

Benziger Brothers publish the most complete line of prayer-books 
in this country. Catalogue will be sent free on application. 

SCHOOL BOOKS. 

Benziger Brothers’ school text-books are considered to be the 
finest published. They embrace: New Century Catholic 
Readers. Illustrations in Colors. Catholic National 
Readers. Catechisms. History. Grammars. Spellers. 
Elocution Manuals. Charts. 

15 


A Home Library for $i Down. 

Original American Stories for the Youngs by the 
Very Best Catholic Authors. 


20 


COPYRIGHTED BOOKS and a YEAR’S SUBSCRIPTION to 
BENZIGER’S MAGAZINE (in itself a library of good reading). 


Regular Price of Books, . $11.70 | Regular Price, 

Regular price of Benziger’s Magazine, 2.00 ) $13.70. 


Special Net Price, $ 70 . 00 . $/.oo Down. $/.oo a Month- 

You get the books at once, and have the use of them, while making easy 
payments. Send us only $1.00, and we will forward the books at once. 
$1.00 entitles you to immediate possession. No further payment need 
be made for a month. Afterward you pay $1.00 a month. 


ANOTHER EASY WAY OF GETTING BOOKS. 

Each year we publish four new Novels by the best Catholic authors. 
These novels are interesting beyond the ordinary; not religious, but 
Catholic in tone and feeling. 

We ask you to give us a Standing Order for these novels. The price 
is $1.25 a volume postpaid. The $5.00 is not to be paid at one time, but 
$1.25 each time a volume is published. 

As a Special Inducement for giving us a standing order for these 
novels, we will give you free a subscription to Benziger’s Magazine. 
This Magazine is recognized as the best and handsomest Catholic maga- 
zine published. The regular price of the Magazine is $2.00 a year. 

Thus for $5.00 a year — paid $1.25 at a time — you will get four good 
books and receive in addition free a year’s subscription to Benziger s 
Magazine. The Magazine will be continued from year to year, as long 
as the standing order for the novels is in force, which will be till 
countermanded. 

Send $1.25 for the first novel and get your name placed on the sub- 
scription list of Benziger’s Magazine. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS 

NhwYork: Cincinnati: Chicago; 

36 and 38 Barclay Street. 343 Main Street. 211 and 213 Madison Str-s^t. 










f 

I *, 


L« tell 


» ^ V 




]' II 


oi A 


. i i 



V' 


I 







N* 


•'‘C 








s 




i. 


r 




^ - 

« 


• j 


» 


> 

< 



I 




z 














